


Like a Lonely House

by Starlingthefool



Series: Till Then My Windows Ache [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death of a Parent, Depression, Grief, Longing, M/M, Mention of past drug overdose, Mention of past drug use/addiction, No but seriously this is a ton of angst, Trigger Warnings, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:57:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 33,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens<br/>to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,<br/>to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned;<br/>so I wait for you like a lonely house<br/>till you will see me again and live in me.<br/>Till then my windows ache.</p><p>-Pablo Neruda, Sonnet LXV</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Like a Window In Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Um. Hi. This is an overdue sequel to [Fundamental Imperfection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/387876). You will not understand this without reading that first. I'm posting it as a WIP, mostly so it'll stop languishing on my hard drive. It's not finished, and I will not have a regular posting schedule (I have two jobs and a plateful of other writing projects, they get first dibs on my time), BUT IT WILL GET DONE, I PROMISE. 
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNINGS:** Character death that occurs in the very first sentence. Mentions of past drug usage and a past overdose. Depression. Heartbreak. It all gets outlined in the last bit of Fundamental Imperfection, so give that a read if you want full spoilers.

Because Merlin had a stupendous memory for asinine details, he would always remember listening to Paul Simon's _Graceland_ when they got the call that Arthur's father had died. 

He put it on before turning on the coffee maker. The bass lines--really, they made the album, much more so than the South African singers and rhythms--were bouncing through the apartment, and Merlin swung his hips to them absentmindedly, staring at the coffee pot in an effort to make it brew faster with his brain, and thinking vaguely about praying mantises. He'd spotted one in the garden the other day, and the sight of it had caused such a bright flare of irrational terror that he immediately decided he'd have to write about it, try and find a way to sympathize with such a monstrous-looking thing. 

Merlin loved sympathetic monsters. 

Arthur was sitting at the table with his usual pile of newspapers: _The Guardian, the London Times, The Independent._ There were orderly stacks of notepads and books to be reviewed, an iPad, a cup of pens. Arthur did most of his work in their kitchen, which Merlin had always found surprising. He seemed the type to have a study with an enormous desk. 

Paul Simon was singing about miracles and wonders when Arthur looked up. "Do you hear that?" he asked.

Merlin was never at his best in the mornings. "Hmm?" he asked. The coffee pot was only half full. This brewer seemed to go slower the more half-asleep Merlin was. He really needed to get a new French press. He'd broken the last one, and the one before it. Gravity hated Merlin.

"Was that your phone or mine?" Arthur asked.

Merlin blinked at him. "I don't hear anything." 

Arthur cocked his head, standing still for a moment. Then he stood up, knocking the _Times Literary Supplement_ to the floor, sprinting up the stairs where, presumably, he heard his phone ringing. Merlin blinked and turned back to the coffee pot. He still didn't hear a thing, but he was never all the way there before his first cup of coffee. 

By the time he had poured his and Arthur's coffee, _Graceland_ had moved onto its title track, Paul Simon singing about broken hearts and the home of Elvis. Merlin had first heard this album when he was a spotty teenager who spent at least 75% of his time high on whatever drugs he could scrounge up in the outer Cardiff suburbs. 

His mum had owned the record. She'd been embarrassingly cool, far cooler than him, as many of his friends had remarked. Merlin remembered putting it on the shitty record player that he'd found in a junk shop, and lying back in bed with a joint laced with hashish. The bass lines had made him shift and wriggle in his bed; they were so _bouncy_ , he'd thought to himself. A few minutes later his mum had stormed in, asking why the hell he was jumping on his bed and giggling to himself at eleven-thirty at night. Then she'd caught a whiff of the smoke, and had started whapping him across the shoulders with a pillow. _Are you high?!_ she kept shrieking, while Merlin tried to tell her it was just incense she was smelling.

Asinine details. If he ever wrote a memoir, that's what he'd title it, since that's all it would be. 

Arthur still hadn't come down by the time the song was over, so Merlin topped up his own coffee and took both mugs upstairs. 

"Arthur?" he called. He didn't hear Arthur's voice coming from anywhere, but their bedroom door was ajar. He pushed it open with his hip, looking around the jamb. Arthur was sitting on their bed. He looked odd. Unfamiliar. 

They'd been together for two years, and living together for one. Merlin had seen, so he'd thought, all of Arthur's various postures, sitting and on his feet. He knew how to read the line of Arthur's shoulders, the angle of his eyebrows, the set of his jaw. He could tell the difference between the tension that came from a stiff back in the morning and the tension that came from a frustration with a writing project, or the fear of a looming deadline, or the aggravation from a shitty conversation with his father. 

But Merlin didn't know _this_ ; he couldn't read the slump of Arthur's shoulders, or the limp way his hand held his mobile, like he might drop it at any moment. It was disorienting. 

"Arthur?" Merlin said, unsure, afraid. He unconsciously pulled the warm mugs of coffee closer to his chest. 

Arthur didn't look up. "My father's dead," he said. 

Paul Simon was still playing downstairs, singing about a girl wearing diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Merlin couldn't move.

 _Put the mugs down, idiot,_ he thought, and a second later, he managed to set them down on the dresser. He found himself hesitating there, unsure of what to do next. It was that posture, the indecipherable slump of Arthur's spine. Merlin was supposed to be fluent in the language of his lover's body by now. This felt like a sudden attack of aphasia. 

_Go to him, idiot,_ Merlin thought. He took the the three steps from the dresser to the bed and sat down next to Arthur. He didn't seem to notice. Merlin took the phone out of Arthur's loose grip before he could drop it. Arthur's hand was limp and sweaty, pliable and still, unresponsive as Merlin twined their fingers together. 

_Say something, idiot,_ he thought, and tried desperately to think of something that wasn't stupid or banal. When his own father had died, eight months before, he'd broken down in horrifying, undignified tears before his mother had even finished giving him the details over the phone. Arthur had pried the phone loose from his hand and talked to his mum, while Merlin cried in his lap, getting snot and tears all over Arthur's Burberry chinos. 

Merlin squeezed Arthur's palm between both of his and asked, "How?" 

"Brain aneurysm," Arthur said. His voice was dull, flat in a way that, like his posture, was frighteningly alien and strange to Merlin. "He was at work. They took him to hospital but he was already dead."

And really, what was there to say to that? 

Merlin stood up, leaned as far as he could without letting go of Arthur's hand, and grabbed the mug of coffee from the dresser, and pressed it into Arthur's free hand. 

"Drink that," he said, feeling ridiculously British. It wasn't tea, but if there one thing that could be relied upon in times of emergency, it was that hot drinks made things better. There was a law somewhere. 

Arthur looked at the mug, glanced at Merlin, and huffed in amusement. Not a laugh, but a distant third-cousin to it. 

Merlin squeezed his hand, and watched Arthur drink his coffee. Downstairs, Paul Simon sang on, the bass lines of his songs bouncing up the stairs and falling faintly into the air of the bedroom.


	2. Separating Earth From Sky

from: yourownpersonalmerlin@merlinemrys.com  
to: wart@arthurpendragon.com  
SUBJ: bloody sandflies  
22/03/2013

You know what I really wish someone had told me about before I'd jumped at the chance to do this New Zealand tour? Sandflies. Were you aware of them? They're the size of midges, sting worse than mosquitoes, and are bloody everywhere. 

Aside from being used as an entomological feeding ground, New Zealand is... it's fucking New Zealand, Arthur. I think of Wales as being rugged, but those are are just geological zits compared to these giant things. I'll be looking across some grassy hills, thinking about something innocuous--infectious diseases, people who have teeth growing out of their fingers instead of nails, dandelions, what-have-you--and then all of a sudden, these enormous mountains rear up right in front of me like 1000 kilometer-high horses that startle easy. The beauty of this country... it robs me of words. 

One of my guides here, Paul, was telling me Maori myths during the drive to Wellington. Aotearoa (Maori language = 80% vowels, complete opposite of Welsh) is actually a giant fish that Maui yanked up from the bottom of the sea. All the mountains and valleys are from when Maui's brothers tried to club the fish to death. The Maori creation myth is fantastic--all the gods were born sandwiched in between their primeval parents, who loved each other too much to be separate. They wanted to see the light, and decided to make their parents split. The god of trees and forests pushed them apart, growing in between them to let light into the world. Lovely, right? A bit sad, as well. 

I think it struck me because it's something I understand, what with you on the other side of the world. This distance right now is giving me a perspective on you that I haven't had since...

Well, since we began, I suppose. Since I wooed you with long-distance pillow talk. That odd interim when you were still in Canada and America, where you were both out-of-reach and a constant presence. I thought of you almost constantly--while masturbating, naturally, but also in more casual ways--but you were an ocean away. And you were thinking of me at the same time. 

(Probably masturbating as well, though you'd never own up to it. Prude.)

This morning, I woke up at some absurd hour. It was still dark, just the thinnest crack of light at the edge of the horizon. It took me a minute to sort out where I was, why I was there, and most of all, why you weren't with me. I was in one of those weird liminal states between sleeping and wakefulness, and your absence in my bed took on an almost physical aspect. I had the strangest conviction that I could rest my hand in the air a few inches off the bed, and you would feel it between your shoulders. The feeling followed me when I fell back asleep, and I had a really lovely dream about you. (Which had its own physical aspect, wink wink, nudge nudge, oh shut up.) 

I miss you, but I'm sort of... enjoying missing you? Is that weird? I guess I'm enjoying the anticipation of returning to you. Mostly, I'm anticipating the tremendous sex we'll be having when I return. Clear your calender. 

All of this is a really roundabout way and not at all logical way of saying, I've been thinking about your proposal. And yes. I'll move to London. But we're going to need a bigger place than your flat, our combined libraries will make the floors collapse. 

I love you.

Please be aware that my mother will be ringing you to shout about this. She thinks London is full of fascist politicians and immigrants who riot at the drop of a hat. Soothe her, would you? She likes you.

All my love. Except for the bit dedicated to Ray Bradbury, but you already know about that.  
-M.


	3. What Need of Tears Have We?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mourning made most people slump, in Merlin's experience. It made Morgana stand up even straighter, looking like a petite dagger dressed in Louis Vuitton.

Mourning made most people slump, in Merlin's experience. It made Morgana stand up even straighter, looking like a petite dagger dressed in Louis Vuitton. She didn't look like a bereaved daughter, which was probably exactly what she wanted. She stood outside the hospital entrance, tapping her hand against one thigh. Her phone was clenched in her other hand, and she was glaring down at it when he and Arthur's cab pulled up. 

Merlin thought there was a 50-50 chance that Arthur would hug Morgana. The two weren't the hugging type, and it typically took odd events to make them physically affectionate with each other. (Or vast amounts of alcohol.) When Arthur had been shortlisted for the Sunday Times short story prize, Morgana had merely slapped his shoulders and crowed, "I will personally assassinate Mark Haddon if I hear a whisper of him winning." When Junot Diaz won instead, as they all knew he would, Morgana had bought them round after round of drinks while detailing her plan for vengeance against the judges. 

This was what passed for affection among Pendragon clan.

He and Arthur walked up to her. After an extremely awkward moment of silence, Morgana held open her arms, and Arthur inserted himself into them perfunctorily. 

"Hi," she said. 

"Hello," he answered, and stepped back away.

_Thank god I wasn't born a Pendragon,_ thought Merlin. He hugged Morgana as well, slightly longer than Arthur, because he suspected she wasn't as tough as Arthur liked to claim. 

Merlin loved Morgana. He had ever since he had made the decision to actually attempt to seduce Arthur. Well, a little after that, actually. 

He had made the decision after breakfast, while reading the last dozen pages of _Boy Outside_ and trying hard not to weep onto his cold, stale toast. He'd reached for the book before he was even all the way awake that morning, and had stayed in bed for nearly an hour after he'd woken up, ignoring his full bladder and empty stomach and morning-mouth until all three were unbearable. Even then, he'd carried the book into the kitchen with him, and had read it while the kettle boiled and the toast burnt. He managed to get through the cup of coffee, but couldn't take more than a bite or two of the toast before he started leaking tears. 

_Curiosities_ , the first book Merlin had read by Arthur, was good literature. The stories were fun, evocative, and sharp. Arthur had a lovely way with sentences, could craft them like blades or arrows. _Curiosities_ proved that Arthur had serious writing chops, and wasn't just a dilettante Oxbridge arsehole with a pedigree. 

_Boy Outside_ was an entirely different animal: full of emotion and edged with desperation and yearning. Reading it made Merlin realize that he might actually love the stuffy, overbred clod that wrote it. 

So--like an _entirely_ sane person--he'd called up Morgana and had an incredibly inappropriate conversation with her, yammering on about how he knew better than to equate the love for a piece of art with love for its creator in some upside-down Pygmalion and Galatea scenario, but would she mind pissing off for a night so he could attempt to seduce Arthur? 

Morgana had laughed long and hard, and then declared that it had been too long since she'd seen some cousins in County Mayo. Arthur would be on his own for a night in Dublin. 

Merlin had loved her ever since. 

"Is this one of those occasions where I'm allowed to smoke without you making comments about mouth cancer?" Arthur asked.

"Only if you share," Morgana replied. 

Arthur pulled a pack of Dunhills from his coat pocket--he'd bought them at the corner offie on the way here--and tapped two out. He glanced at Merlin, eyebrows raised. Merlin nodded, and Arthur shook out another. 

"Should we be... planning something?" Merlin asked, after Arthur had lit all of their cigarettes. 

"The lawyers--" Arthur and Morgana chorused, then glared at each other. Merlin clenched his jaw to keep from laughing. 

Arthur looked away first, so Morgana continued. "The lawyers are dealing with the paperwork and the will. Uther already specified that he wanted to be cremated and the funeral company that he wanted hired. They'll be transporting the body--"

She broke off to take a deep drag off her cigarette. "God, that's strange to say," she said. 

Merlin leaned into her a little, knowing she'd likely shrug him off if he tried anything more. She leaned back, a warm, boney weight against his arm. 

"It's strange to hear," Arthur said. 

They all fell silent for a moment, smoking, the word "body" echoing in the spaces between them. Merlin noticed that Arthur's shirt was done up wrong, one button off. He wondered if Morgana had noticed it; she was quick to point such things out, normally. But this wasn't a normal situation. 

"They'll be transporting him to the funeral home in the next hour or two," Morgana eventually said. "I've already said my goodbyes. If you want to, it should probably be sooner rather than later."

"Goodbyes," Arthur repeated dully. 

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Morgana said. 

"I want to," Arthur said. He looked down at the cigarette in his hand, took another drag, and then let it drop. Merlin did the same, standing up. 

"You can stay here if you like," Arthur said. He sounded robotic.

"It's fine," Merlin said. "I'll come."

Arthur opened his mouth, shut it. He looked extremely uncomfortable.

"Not into the room," Merlin said, taking a wild guess at Arthur's thought process. "I'll just walk you in."

Arthur nodded, looking relieved. He passed the pack of cigarettes to Morgana. "There'd better be some left when I come back," he said. He turned to go inside, and Merlin followed him.

Merlin didn't have the horror of hospitals that many people he knew did. He didn't like them, but he'd had enough exposure that the mystery had been replaced by mundanity. There had been an overdose when he was nineteen; his third time ever trying heroin, and Gilly had scored a bad batch. Merlin stayed in hospital for four days before being released into his mum's custody. He ate a lot of applesauce and watched a lot of David Attenborough nature documentaries. He would forever associate Attenborough's voice with having a sore throat from the tracheal tube, eating a lot of apple sauce, and watching his mum cry. 

The soles of Arthur's shoes clacked smartly in the hallway, the finely cobbled heel striking the lino with a precise sound. Merlin, on the other hand, was wearing his Converse trainers. They squeaked a little, but were mostly silent. Matching Arthur's stride out of force of familiarity and habit--maybe it was Arthur matching his, after all, or maybe they had made a stride that belonged equally to both of them--Merlin felt a little ghostly, a little superfluous. Should he touch Arthur? Arthur still seemed so closed off, an empty lot with razor wire around the perimeter. 

When they reached the morgue, Arthur froze a few feet away from the desk. 

"Arthur?" Merlin asked, and Arthur shook his head slowly, but couldn't seem to say anything. 

"I'll ask," Merlin said. "I'll find out where he is. Okay?" 

"Yeah," Arthur said, in a sound that was more sigh than word. 

Merlin looked again at the crooked line of Arthur's shirt, the lopsided way it was buttoned. He brushed his hand down Arthur's arm, then walked the last few feet to the desk. 

"We're looking for..." The corpse of? The body of? The vessel formerly belonging to? "We're looking for Uther Pendragon. We're family."

"Family" was a word that encompassed so many sins. Like Uther practically disowning Arthur for several years before coming to terms with the fact that his only son was 1.) a novelist, someone who indulged in "fictitious fripperies" for a living, as Uther once _actually_ said, and 2.) bent. Even then, Uther had only spoken to Merlin a handful of times, and all of it extremely forced small talk. 

And yet, Merlin could invoke the word _family_ , and nobody would question it, least of all the morgue attendant, who simply typed something on his computer and then said, "Just this way."

He stood up and walked around his desk. Merlin glanced back at Arthur, and they both followed the attendant down another series of identical hallways, finally ending in front of a door that looked like any other door. There was a disturbing amount of uniformity in hospitals.

"I'll be at the desk when you're finished," the attendant said, and left them there. His shoes made softer echoes than Arthur's had, an odd whispering sound that echoed down the hallways. 

"I'll wait out here for you," Merlin said. He had had nothing to say to Uther when he was alive besides _Thank you for your son_ and _Why are you such a fucking prick?_ He couldn't think of anything else to say now that Uther was dead.

"Unless you want me to go in with you?" Merlin added, selfishly hoping that Arthur wouldn't. 

Arthur shook his head. "That's fine. I'd like to be alone with him. It. Him. Shit, I don't know." 

It was the first time Arthur's stony exterior had cracked, and Merlin felt an embarrassing flood of relief and recognition. It felt like seeing him at the airport after a month spent apart, and he unthinkingly moved towards him, wanting to embrace him, throw his arms around him. 

Then he paused. Merlin instead brought his hands to Arthur's shirt, the bottom button. 

"What are you...?" Arthur said, looking down. 

"You buttoned it wrong," Merlin said, undoing it. He went up the line of the shirt slowly, fixing the buttons into their proper places. 

"Didn't even notice," Arthur mumbled. "Shit." 

"It's okay," Merlin said. He fixed the top button in place, and then smoothed down the front of Arthur's shirt with his palm. Arthur leaned his head into the juncture of Merlin's neck and shoulder. His face felt warm. Was he running a fever? Could grief do that? Were sadness and loss something the immune system could try to fight off, like an invasive microbe? What would the antibodies for sadness look like?

Merlin touched the nape of Arthur's neck with his hand, running his fingers down Arthur's spine, squeezing the tense muscle of his shoulder. 

"Shit," Arthur said again. 

"I know," Merlin said, even though he didn't, really. Yes, his father had died. But his father was a distant relation that Merlin had only ever gotten to know long after his childhood had ended. He had spent more years not knowing his father than knowing him, and it was an easy adjustment back to a life without him. 

Uther, on the other hand, had been the dominant force in Arthur's life since his birth. First by his presence, then by his stubborn absence, then by his slow, hesitant strides back into Arthur's life. Hell, Arthur's first novel was dedicated to him, was entirely inspired by their relationship.

Merlin couldn't even imagine that. And his imagination was pretty immense. 

Arthur straightened up, and took a shaky breath. Merlin fussed at his collar, which was already straight, but it was a good excuse to keep touching him. 

"I'll be right here," Merlin said. Arthur nodded and moved away, and Merlin let him go.


	4. The Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unsent letter from Arthur to his father.

14 June, 2012.

Dear Father,

Do you remember the rugby match I played in when I was thirteen, just before we had moved back to London from Devon? It was late autumn, nearly but not quite raining, and cold as balls. (Yes, Father, _cold as balls._ I can already visualize the disgusted wrinkles forming around your mouth and nose, but it's a fun phrase, if somewhat misleading. Testicles aren't known for their coldness, but this tangent is now written in ink, and you'll just have to put up with it: cold. as. balls.)

(It's probably apparent to you now that I've been drinking. The wrinkles are deepening around your mouth, I'm sure.)

Anyway, the rugby match. It was one of those hard, long games: slippery grass, cleats throwing up mud, everyone chilled and miserable, using a bit more violence than necessary. One boy, must have had two stone on me, tackled me so hard that I clung to the ground, terrified that I'd never be able to breathe properly again. But I knew you were watching, not with concern over my well-being, but with the expectation that I would get up and keep playing. 

I was much more afraid of your disappointment than being injured, as it turns out. So I got up, and kept playing. We lost the game, though only marginally. _You did well, Arthur,_ you told me on our way back to the car. _I am proud of you._

You looked constipated. I was trying not to cry, both from your words and the pain I was still feeling in my ribs. I felt keenly embarrassed, because I was so transparent. Those nine words were all I longed to hear from you, and my yearning obviously put you off. I repeated the words to myself alone in bed that night, replayed our brief conversation, and hated myself for doing it. 

It wasn't until a day later, when a fall off my bike necessitated a trip to A&E, that we realized two of my ribs had been cracked in that tackle. I was lucky I hadn't ended up with a punctured lung. 

Fast-forward about fourteen years. You practically disowned me when I announced my intention to go into writing and academia rather than business, when I declared that I was gay and you'd bloody well have to put up with it and stop setting me up on dates with your colleagues' vapid daughters. (I'm actually bisexual, but was horrified to the point of constipation at the idea of explaining the grey areas of my sexuality to you. Also, your colleagues' daughters really are intolerable.) 

We so thoroughly burned the bridge between us, the fragile ropes and planks built over the abyss the stretched between our two personalities. We each lit a match, burned it from both ends, and then walked away. 

Four months following that, I showed Morgana an early draft of _Boy Outside,_ and she--miracle of miracles--recognized the good bits of it underneath all the dreck, and put me in contact with an editor who coaxed it out of the mud. A year and a half later, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker. After Anne Enright won for _The Gathering_ \--I wasn't surprised at all, though Morgana rang me and happily called her a string of invectives to cheer me up--I got your card in the mail. Beautiful, thick cardstock, embossed with _Congratulations_ in glossy black ink. And on the inside, nineteen words written with--or so I imagined--the gold-plated fountain pen I gave you for your fiftieth birthday:

_Though I have not read your novel, I am sure it deserved to win. I am proud of you._

The first line of _Boy Outside_ is: "There is a unique terror in finding a door ajar, especially if you remember leaving it closed."

It is the worst thing in the world to be thirteen and trying not to cry in front of your father. It is the second-worst thing to feel as though you are thirteen again when in fact, you are a grown man in your kitchen, brought to stunned tears by nineteen words written on a card from a high-end paperie. 

Do you know that _Boy Outside_ is dedicated to you?

I am now thirty-four. We've spoken a few dozen times in the last five years, had dinners, Christmases together. We don't speak about the following things: your business ventures, my writing, your affairs with married women, my sexuality. We mostly argue about politics instead. It's the new status quo, another fragile bridge stretched across two otherwise impenetrable cliffs. Fraught with tension, swaying unsteadily in the wind, we're both oddly protective of it, even (maybe especially) with each other. 

So I won't tell you about my new lover. Not yet, at least. I've never bothered you with news of them before, and I'm sure you'd feel disgruntled if I stammered out "I'm seeing someone" to you now. I won't tell you that I fell for him while we were exchanging insults and disparaging remarks over each others' tastes in novels while drinking whiskey in a hotel bar. I won't tell you about the fragile bones of his ankles, the way they feel cupped in my palms, or the way his eyes wrinkle when he grins, or his ridiculous ears. I won't tell you that he managed to save me from despair from thousands of miles away. And I won't send you this letter. 

Someday, I'll carry the weight of him across this bridge to you, because that is what a boy does with a father whose approval he still wants. And maybe you'll say, _you found love like I once did, and I congratulate you. You did well, and I am proud of you._ More likely, you'll be exquisitely uncomfortable, and rather angry with me for disrupting the fragile peace we've constructed around our respective neuroses. But in the end, I'd still have him to love and fuck and argue with and make crepes for in the morning. That would be enough. 

I remain,  
Your loving (if somewhat cowardly) son,  
Arthur


	5. The Body

Arthur's eyes kept insisting that his father was breathing. 

Arthur stared at the sheet covering his father's face, the sharp bridge of his nose. The sheet didn't stir, and yet Arthur could swear that Uther still breathed. He felt an odd urge to reach out, touch his father's face, his chest, try and wake him. But at the same time, he couldn't move, literally could not take a step closer. His feet had rooted themselves into the tiled floor, had become stone. Arthur was turning into a golem from the ground up. 

So this is what shock felt like. He'd always wondered.

Arthur blinked, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. He took a breath.

His father did not. His father was dead. 

There was only one pair of lungs functioning in the room. With his eyes shut against any distractions, Arthur could hear not only his own, lonely respiration; but also his heart, his blood thudding through the rivers and streams of his body; his stomach spewing forth acid into his esophagus until his throat burned, his mouth salivating against the sting.

He had never felt so horribly, grotesquely alive.

Arthur took another breath and then opened his eyes. "Father," he tried to whisper, but choked. He reached out, determined to pull the sheet back from Uther's face, but faltered at the last moment. 

_Do I dare disturb the dead? Arthur thought,_ his brain mangling Eliot. Uther would have hated Prufrock, would have dismissed him as an self-conscious ninny, going on about peaches and coffee spoons. _Just eat the bloody peach,_ he would have said. On the other hand, Uther had liked _Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats_ enough to read it to Arthur at bedtime, once upon a time. His father had favored Old Deuteronomy, though Arthur had secretly loved Mistoffolees. 

_He's always deceiving you into believing that he's only hunting for mice._ It was the rhyme, the rhythm of the sentence. Uther had read it perfectly, voice pitched low and amused. Tie loosened. Sleeves rolled up. The most relaxed his father ever got. He'd stopped reading to Arthur when he was eight, telling him that he was old enough to read to himself. And so he had, under the covers, flashlight tucked uncomfortably between his shoulder and ear, following Bilbo through Mirkwood with the magic ring in his pocket, or Gerda to Lapland in pursuit of the Snow Queen and her best friend. They'd kept him company in the dark until he could fall asleep. They'd lent him their bravery when he was alone and lonely.

Arthur's hand settled on his father's forearm with a sour thrill of fear. Uther's was cold underneath the sheet. Cold and stiff, irrevocably and unequivocally dead. An object. Nothing that should cause this flood of adrenaline and fear.

Of course, that was rational thinking, and rational thinking fell short when it came to death. What was there left to rationalize? Whatever force that had made all the molecules of a body work in conjunction with one another had flooded out of the body, and all those little disparate parts that made someone alive--a living human being who laughed (seldom, in Uther's case), loved (conditionally), and fought (tactically and dispassionately), that made a bag of skin and bones and viscera--all of it just fell apart. 

_Things fall apart; the center cannot hold._

Now, Yeats was a poet that his father would have liked. Not the prideful Irish stuff, nor the Crazy Jane series, which Arthur had always loved, but the real gloomy poems. His father had always liked gloomy things.

Arthur became aware that he was gripping his dead father's forearm hard enough to bruise--if one could leave bruises after death. He'd ask Merlin later; Merlin watched a lot of police procedurals. 

This wasn't shock, Arthur thought distantly. It was probably the first signs of madness. He let go of Uther's forearm to wipe at his suddenly wet face.

* * *

The hallway was cold and sterile and there was nothing to distract Merlin from the hospital smell of sickness and disinfectant. Or was that smell formaldehyde? Did morgues still use formaldehyde? They wouldn't have embalmed Uther already, surely, he'd only been dead a matter of hours. How long did it take to embalm someone, anyway? To drain their life's blood away and replace it with a preservative to delay inevitable decay? 

Merlin hated his brain sometimes, the way his imagination took off like a herd of spooked horses. So when his mobile buzzed, he pulled it out of his pocket with relief. There was a text from Morgana.

 _How is he?_ she'd written. _I didn't want to ask in front of him like he wasn't there._

Merlin pictured her outside, probably sitting on a bench in one of the designated smoking areas, puffing her way through Arthur's Dunhills, telling herself that she was just preventing Arthur from becoming addicted again.

Merlin peeked into the room, shamelessly spying. Not that Arthur noticed; he was hunched over the gurney that held his father's body. He was so still, he looked like a statue--or a corpse--and Merlin felt an irrational thrill of fear until he saw that Arthur was breathing, his shoulders jerking minutely on the inhalation. Trying not to cry, because a man like Arthur could never cry in front of a father like Uther. Even when one of them was beyond seeing and, one would hope, beyond judging. 

_I have no idea,_ Merlin texted back. _And it really scares me. How are you?_

There was no reply for several minutes, and he'd begun to believe that he wouldn't get an answer out of her at all, that she'd left him alone with the probably-not-really-formaldehyde-smell and his terrible imagination. Then his pocket buzzed. 

_I'm feeling everything in a zoetrope of sad angry frustrated grieving angry sad worry ambivalent overwhelmed angry. I already lost the people I believed were my parents, and then the whole stupid story about Uther and my mother came out, and I hated him for years and believed it was perfectly mutual. It wasn't, but the man was more than emotionally constipated, he was the Hoover fucking Dam of not sharing his feelings. Except for anger and disappointment. Fucking men, that's the only thing they ever know how to feel._

Then, in another text, Morgana added, _Present company excluded of course._

That made him smile. Merlin was attempting to think of a reply when she sent him another block of text. 

_And in my heart I buried him long ago, I cut him out of my heart and buried him so I could bloody well get on with my life and not be one of those pathetic women weeping on her therapist's shoulder because DADDY ISSUES, WOE. God, fuck fathers, they are the worst, they're like nuclear reactors that take out entire cities when they fail, leaving radioactive waste in the water and cancer for generations. Fuck them. The ones that leave and the ones that stay and the ones you can't ever quite forgive._

_Christ, sorry, didn't mean to write you a tumblr post by text, sorry._

Merlin was at a loss for how to respond to that, so he just texted back, _I love you, it's fine, I'm very impressed by your thumb agility. We should all probably get drunk tonight._

 _Arthur won't drink,_ she wrote back. _Not tonight, bet you anything._

Arthur enjoyed his booze as much as any Englishman--which was to say, often, and not always with a great deal of restraint. Merlin was surprised and doubtful, but just wrote back, _We'll see. You're welcome at our place._

_Thank you, but I'm going home. I'll stick around for another excruciatingly awkward hug, though, because I'm certain Arthur will kill me if I run off with his cancer sticks._

There was a sound, an exhalation, and Merlin looked back at the room. Arthur was standing straighter, as if he was saying goodbye and wanted to leave a good last impression. He said nothing out loud, though, eventually just turned and walked back to the door, where Merlin was waiting. 

It was on the tip of his idiotic tongue to ask _How'd it go_ , as if it were a doctor's appointment or a vaguely important lunch meeting that Arthur had just attended. He managed to restrain himself, just rested a hand on Arthur's back as they walked slowly back to the front desk.


	6. Unsteady Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taken from one of Arthur's notebooks. Date unknown.

Life is a tightrope walk to nowhere. We're balanced between life and death, we have no idea where it ends, and going back is impossible. (At least, it is in the metaphor; I'm not going to ruin a perfectly good metaphor with a dose of reality and acrobats.) We face constant annihilation, though we mostly choose to ignore it, keeping our eyes on a fixed point ahead and inching along towards it. And why shouldn't we? Imagine being suspended thousands of feet in the air; the last thing you want to do is look down. 

But of course, sometimes you must. Sometimes you must acknowledge that your existence is precarious and at the mercy of fate. There could be a gust of wind. The rope under your feet might snap, or the knot that you thought was securely fastened could slip loose. 

We move across unsteady ground. You may fall into an abyss. Can you tread water? Keep your balance? Can you lean into the wind and force your feet forward? Can you face the terrible truth: that nothing is guaranteed, that the smallest acts may have immense importance, and that even the kindest life will bless you with scars? Can you face all that and still do things and make things of worth? 

There are times when I am sure of the answer. And there are times when, honestly and truly, I am not.

Addendum: Merlin says I'm only thinking like this because I've been re-reading Sophocles, and Morgana's pestering me about public appearances. He's probably right, but the point stands. "Fire is the test of gold, misfortune the test of brave men." Seneca, I think. Gloomy old bastard. Father liked to quote that one at me.


	7. How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?

How do we forgive our fathers?

Arthur had a glass of whisky sitting at his hand; when he'd sat down in his chair, it had had two lumps of ice in it, but they had long since melted. All the condensation had slid off the sides of the tumbler and collected in a water ring on the side table where he'd set it. The whisky had reverted back to the temperature of the room. 

Which meant that he'd been sitting here, contemplating a single question, for a damn long time. 

Had any father in the history of time been able to measure up? Was fathering a child an act of cynicism or fatalism or blind, stupid optimism? And how could a son move past the yearning and fear and love and disappointment and always, always the same question, _why weren't you what I needed, when I needed, in the way I needed?_ How could anyone who had opened this door walk through it, letting a it shut forever on the past?

On the couch, where he'd fallen asleep hours ago, Merlin stirred. He gave a soft, snorting sigh, contorted his long limbs into a new position that made Arthur ache just looking at him, and went still again. 

They'd talked about it: adoption, surrogacy. Always as a comfortably distant hypothetical. There was plenty of time for it, whenever they were ready. 

Arthur didn't think he ever would be. 

Which brought him back to the question at hand: How do we forgive our fathers? Should we? Would forgiving Uther bring Arthur some measure of peace, that simply loving and disappointing and defying his father had not? 

He remembered the last time they had spoken: about five weeks ago, his father had invited him out for lunch. He'd hesitated on the phone, then said, "Is Merlin...?" 

"He's out of town," Arthur had replied. "Down to Cardiff for the weekend."

"Well," Uther had said, unmistakeably relieved. "Does two o'clock work for you?" And Arthur had realized with shock that Uther had been ready to invite Merlin to lunch as well. 

Lunch went fine. The food was good, and his father had wine and Arthur had cider. Uther didn't bring up Merlin at all, but had asked about Arthur's writing, if he was working on another novel. Arthur told him about the critical essay he'd been working on, an analysis of early utopian novels for a critical anthology of proto-science fiction. He'd gotten about a minute into explaining his thesis before Uther's eyes glazed over, which was better than average, though still irritating. 

Still, Uther had been trying. It was strange. Arthur didn't know how to feel about a father that was trying to compromise and only sort of failing, rather than a father that didn't want to be a part of his life at all. 

"Arthur?" Merlin murmured. He put a hand on Arthur's leg, fumbling for his knee, and squeezed it. "What time is it?"

Arthur looked at his watch. "It's past midnight," he said, surprised. He'd been sitting there contemplating a single question for two hours while Merlin snored on the couch. 

Merlin blinked, and it was visible when he remembered everything that had happened. He shook his head and sat up, keeping one hand on Arthur's leg. "We should go to bed."

"I'm not tired," Arthur said. Going to sleep sounded like a terrible idea. It would necessitate the same moment that he'd just witness Merlin go through, the moment where he remembered that his father was dead, he'd be attending his funeral in four days.

Merlin yawned widely. "How can you not be tired?"

"Go up to bed if you want," Arthur said. "I'll be up soon."

Merlin squeezed his leg. "I don't want to go without you." 

Arthur felt faintly irritated, but the emotion collapsed under itself. Feeling anything took more energy than he currently had, it seemed. "I appreciate the sentiment," he lied. "But it's fine."

Merlin shifted on the couch, coming off of it to crouch in between Arthur's knees. He ran his hands up Arthur's thighs, thumbs brushing along the inseams of Arthur's slacks, pausing to squeeze at his hips. Merlin had truly lovely hands; wide palms, delicate fingers, surprising strength. Arthur caught one, brought it to his lips, kissed the knuckles. 

And remembered, with startling clarity, the feeling of his father's cold, stiff forearm. 

He took a breath, well aware of the way Merlin was watching him: careful, concerned, asking without speaking. Arthur kissed Merlin's hand again, resting his cheek against it. If he concentrated, he could feel Merlin's pulse, the blood rushing through the veins and capillaries. As a child, he had been fascinated by the sight of his own hand held up to a strong light, seeing the shadow of his own circulatory system, the interior of himself--a complete mystery, an enigmatic frontier that would never be mapped to his own satisfaction--made partially visible. 

Bones, blood, muscle, fascia, sinews, tendons: he uncurled Merlin's fingers and laid a kiss in the center of the palm, right along his (long, unbroken) life line. 

"I don't want to sleep," Arthur said, lips moving against Merlin's skin.

"We don't have to," Merlin answered, pushing against him. Arthur could feel the pulse of excitement coming from him, the urge for closeness, intimacy, sex. 

"Not sure I'm up for _that_ either," Arthur said. He was fairly certain seeing one's father's corpse was a certified mood-killer for at least twenty-four hours. 

"Well, we don't have to do that either," Merlin said. He ran his other hand up Arthur's arm, squeezing the nape of his neck. "Just... bed."

Arthur sighed again, then nodded. Merlin stood and pulled Arthur out of his chair, then walked him up the stairs to their bedroom like he was drunk. Standing a few feet from their bed, Arthur realized suddenly how tired he was--emotionally and intellectually exhausted. He still fought against the idea of sleep though, and it was to this end that he kissed Merlin. 

Merlin sighed against Arthur's mouth. His hands roamed over Arthur's back and shoulders, pulling him in closer. 

"Is this okay?" he asked. He felt so warm, so alive. Arthur's own body felt grotesque, but Merlin's was as it always had been: lovely, accommodating, fascinating. 

"Take off your clothes," Arthur requested. Merlin pulled away from him long enough to shimmy out of his t-shirt, tossing it vaguely in the direction of the hamper. His hands hesitated at his belt, until Arthur nodded at him to get on with it. When he was down to his shorts, he gently pushed Arthur onto the bed, and he smiled as his hands went to the button on Arthur's slacks. 

"What is it?" Arthur asked.

Merlin spoke softly. "That first night. Liminal Con. You were pissed and halfway asleep in your bed, still trying to insult me."

Arthur reached for the memory. They had told the story so many times and in so many formats that it had become just that: a story. A sequence of events with two main characters. He could hardly grab onto anything concrete anymore. 

He remembered tumbling into bed and feeling like it was the most comfortable thing he'd ever experienced. Moving seemed impossible. But what had the sheets felt like? Had his muscles been relaxed or strained? Had the room spun around him? 

Would he have welcomed Merlin into his bed that night? Of course he would have: he remembered wishing that Merlin would kiss him, but he wasn't quite willing to make the first move, pull him into an embrace. What would have happened if he had? If Merlin had been a little more handsy on the walk back to the room? 

"I offered to take off your shoes," Merlin said. "And you told me you weren't an invalid." 

"Just exhausted and drunk," Arthur said, still trying to grab at the sense memories of that night. The bed. The sheets against his hands. Merlin making fun of him. "I was hoping you would kiss me." 

Merlin touched his waist, then ducked forward and brushed his lips softly across Arthur's. "I might have, if you'd asked." 

Arthur so often wanted to believe in destiny, that there was a narrative to his life, that it would, if only in retrospect, all make sense someday. That it would, in fact, be a story with a beginning, middle, and...

He didn't want to think about endings right now.

Arthur let Merlin unbutton his trousers and strip off his socks, though he balked when Merlin's hands went to the hem of his shirt or the waist of his boxers. Something about his own body felt off, sour, monstrous. It made Arthur's stomach churn, the thought of being naked. Merlin didn't push, didn't question it, and was happy to strip down to his bare skin when Arthur tugged at his boxers. Arthur stared at him, the pale skin, the sparse hair between his nipples, the birthmark on the underside of his arm, the pale blue veins in his wrists. His cock was half-hard, though he seemed content to ignore it. He let Arthur get his fill of gazing at him, meeting his eyes calmly.

"Did you ever believe in Heaven?" Arthur asked, wondering how he'd spent the last two years loving Merlin without knowing the answer to the question. "Hell?"

Merlin blinked. "You want to talk theology? Right now?"

Arthur ran a hand down Merlin's ribs, feeling his lungs expand and contract, and didn't answer. Merlin drew in a deep breath and sighed, lying down next to Arthur on the bed.

"I never believed in Heaven. It didn't make any sense. And I didn't believe in God like the vicar thought I should. Like He was a benevolent uncle that I could talk to when I was upset. But who was also watching and judging me all the time, especially when I masturbated." 

Arthur smiled, and gave Merlin's cock a friendly squeeze. It stiffened a little in his hand, and he let it go, trailing his hand down Merlin's thigh. Merlin sighed, but said nothing about it. Arthur knew he was teasing, but he was too tired for anything else. 

"Funny old uncle," Arthur said. 

"Very funny. So God was out, because I couldn't imagine some old sod peering out from behind his shutters controlling every aspect of the universe." Merlin sighed. "Hell, though. I believed in that. Scared the shite out of me." 

"You believed in Hell but not Heaven?"

"When I was a kid, yeah. Purgatory too. They made sense, somehow." 

"Eternal damnation made sense?" 

Merlin lay back on their bed. "Morbid kid, remember? I was on a first-name basis with all the monsters under my bed."

Arthur circled his fingers around Merlin's hipbone where it jutted out. He'd seen pictures of Merlin as a child, the odd video that his mother had recorded. He was goofy looking, with his slightly fey expression and bowl cut and manic grin. But sometimes, you could see in his eyes that there was a seriousness underneath it all, a deep sensitivity. That he was a boy clumsily navigating two worlds at odds: the world in his head, and the world outside of it. Arthur could easily imagine such a boy believing in a realm of endless torment. 

Or maybe he was just projecting the man he knew now onto the boy he'd once been. He felt oddly saddened, that he'd never be able to know the whole of Merlin. 

"I wish I'd met you when you were a child," Arthur said. 

Merlin smiled. "I don't. Morgana told me you were horrid when you were young." 

Arthur huffed. "Well, I was to her, but she deserved it." 

"I'm sure," Merlin said, squeezing Arthur's hand. Arthur smiled at him, but the brief moment of mirth had passed, sudden as a summer rain. He felt tired; thinking of his childhood was too close to thinking about his father. 

"Lie down before you fall down, would you," Merlin said, tugging on his shirt. "You look like your eyes are about to slam shut." 

Arthur reluctantly lay down next to Merlin, keeping his hand fitted over his hip. The shape of it--the warmth, the solidity of the curve--was comforting. 

"Long day," Merlin observed. 

Arthur nodded. "Tomorrow's going to be even longer." 

Merlin pulled the duvet over the both of them and turned out the lamp, then turned and pulled Arthur into his arms. "We'll get through it," he said softly. He sounded so sure, Arthur could easily believe him. And yet, he thought--but couldn't finish the sentence. _And yet..._

Arthur fell into a thin, troubled sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _How do we forgive our fathers?_
> 
> maybe in a dream: he's in your power  
> you twist his arm but you're not sure it was  
> he that stole your money you feel calmer  
> and you decide to let him go free
> 
> or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)  
> I must pull from the water but I never  
> knew it or wouldn't have done it until  
> I saw the street-theater play so close up  
> I was moved to actions I'd never before taken
> 
> maybe for leaving us too often or  
> forever when we were little maybe  
> for scaring us with unexpected rage  
> or making us nervous because there seemed  
> never to be any rage there at all
> 
> for marrying or not marrying our mothers  
> for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers  
> and shall we forgive them for their excesses  
> of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them
> 
> for pushing or leaning for shutting doors  
> for speaking only through layers of cloth  
> or never speaking or never being silent
> 
> in our age or in theirs or in their deaths  
> saying it to them or not saying it -  
> if we forgive our fathers what is left  
> -Dick Lourie


	8. Death and the Middle-Aged Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An unpublished story by Merlin Emrys, written after Uther Pendragon's funeral. 
> 
> Filed under WORDS > SHORT > UNPUB > PRIVATE > EXORCISING DEMONS > Death is such shit

Death came for the middle-aged man, wearing casual clothes and a haphazardly knotted scarf. The man was at work, and Death came right into his office, up the elevators and past the secretary, down the hallway and into the corner office with the view of the river and the intersection below. The middle-aged man broke off the phone call he was in, waving at Death to sit down in the chair on the other side of his large desk.

"Are you my three o'clock?" The middle-aged man said. "Or are you from IT?" 

"I'm Death," said Death. And his voice sounded like the cold wind that brings a storm, and like a tree falling in the woods, and everything in the world that is full of loneliness and finality. It was a stone breaking a mirror, the straining of a rope before it snaps. It was the voice of something that can't be denied.

But the middle-aged man had never been intimidated by those things, and said, "No, sorry, I'm not quite finished here. There are invoices to file and cups of coffee to drink and a meeting with someone who's rather important at three o'clock. And I can't die knowing I left my bed unmade and a damp towel on the bathroom floor."

Death settled into the seat across from the middle-aged man, crossed his long legs and folded his thin arms and said, "All right. Give me the reason you want to keep living. If it's good enough, I'll let you stay for a year."

"Just a year?" the man asked, outraged. "Surely I deserve more." 

Death didn't deign to answer that, just said, "You have a single chance to convince me."

The man thought hard about what to say. He doubted invoices and meetings and coffee would be enough. Love? His wife had died years before, and he'd never been able to settle with another woman. There had been affairs, and some of them had even been pleasant, but he doubted they were good reasons to live. His children? But his children were grown, and distant with him. Perhaps his work then--but the man knew that his work, while important to him, would continue on without him. 

What would he do, given an entire year to live? The answer, he knew, was: nothing very different from what he was doing now. 

"All right," said Death. "Let's make this simpler. You can have a month, if you give me a good reason to stay."

"A month?" said the man. 

"Thirty days," said Death. "If you can tell me why you want it so much."

The middle-aged man thought hard, trying to find a reason why he wanted to stay so much, and what he would do in that month that would make it worth living. He could seek adventure and experience, and had he been a young man instead of a middle-aged one, that might have convinced Death. But the man had had his adventures, had traveled and fallen in love and had his heart broken and climbed mountains and felt the wind sing and the stars whisper from the sky. He'd lost the knack for it. He preferred comfort and routine, his newspaper in the morning, perhaps some television at night, his work. Perhaps he'd try to reconnect with his children, but it seemed like a terrible inconvenience for all involved. And for what? The middle-aged man would die soon, and trying to bond with his children now would cause just cause them undue heartache when he passed.

(This was a lie, of course. The middle-aged man was quite selfish.) 

"An hour," Death said, growing impatient. "If you tell me why you want it so much, and what you would do."

And all the man could think about was his unmade bed, the damp towel on his bathroom floor, and how much he would like to drink a cup of tea in the kitchen where he'd drunk tea for the last twenty years, where he had once breakfasted with his wife and son and daughter, before they had died or left him or he had left them. And he knew then that he would perform only these small tasks, because the middle-aged man valued them, and didn't want to leave a mess behind. 

And so the man died then and there, in his office at work. Because Death had never been bothered by his charges' unfinished business.


	9. Dreams I've Had About My Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From one of Arthur's notebooks.

31 March, 2011: Father's ear is dripping blood. He keeps dabbing at it with a hankie, but the hankie turns into a small, shivering bird that looks like it's been gnawed on by a cat. He gives it to me to take care of, and we both know it will die, and that we will both blame me for its death. The bird dies. My father hands me a glass of whiskey, but says nothing. He's disappointed. I pour the whiskey on the bird, thinking that will wake it up, but the bird just melts, like wax. I'm so startled, I wake up. 

15 August, 2011: Father revealed that he is Batman. Really? I asked. No, he said. Don't be an idiot. Iain Banks is Batman. Then something about a mystery about the Mona Lisa. 

23 January, 2012: I'm walking up the stairs of my student flat in Oxford. I get to the top and my father is standing in front of the door. He's naked. I realize I'm naked too. Felt so mortified that I woke up. Kept remembering the sight of my father's pale, saggy arse throughout the day. Considered drowning myself in the Thames. 

17 July, 2013: I'm riding a horse by a lake. The lake is beautiful, surrounded by mountains, calm and peaceful. I watch a hawk gliding through the air. I spot my father on a cliff, far away. I wave to him. He waves back. Then he turns and walks back, away from the water, away from me. I realize I can hear birdsong, and stop to listen to it. It's more beautiful than Beethoven. Woke up to Merlin dry-humping me in his sleep. Excellent morning. 

4 August, 2013: Can't remember the whole dream, only remember meeting my father on a pier and then being in the water. Maybe he pushed me in? No, I think I pushed him. I remember seeing him fall in slow motion, the black water swallowing him, viscous. I jumped in after, to save him. Iguanas were also involved somehow. Think Paul McCartney was in it?

06 April, 2014: I dreamt that I was at Father's funeral, panicked because I was supposed to give the eulogy and didn't have my speech prepared. Woke up before dawn and couldn't fall back asleep. Father's funeral was two days ago, and one of his underlings at the company gave the eulogy, while everyone took turns staring at Morgana, Merlin, and myself. I thought when people died, you were supposed to dream that they were alive, have some kind of conversation with them, gently remember they were dead, and get closure. Dreams are bullshit, I don't care what Morgana says.


	10. This Pendulum of Snow

"I don't want to go," Arthur said, when Morgana came to collect him for their meeting with Uther's solicitors and the estate agents. "He's only been in the ground for two bloody days." 

"Yes, my hangover from the wake hasn't fully worn off either," she said, checking her watch. "That doesn't change the fact that we actually should have met with them before now."

"I don't want Father's money," Arthur said, trying to sound righteous and knowing it probably came off as peevish. He was glad that Merlin had gone to see his agent this morning to ink a deal for a Russian translation of Drowned Towns. He'd been feeling guilty that Merlin had had to see him like this, irritatingly despondent over the death of a man who had... who had been...

"Neither do I," said Morgana. "We can give it to Oxfam for all I care. Or maybe something worse, something he'd hate. Greenpeace?" 

Arthur smiled and stood up. He'd been trying all morning to think of excuses to put off the meeting with his father's solicitors, but had at least gotten dressed. He took a blazer and an umbrella from the closet--the weather had been abominable, rain mixed with sleet, and it seemed that any hopes of a decent spring had fled--and said, "We could make donations in his name to that school in America for cartoon studies." 

"Ooh, that's a good one. Or a memorial scholarship to some silly writing retreat." 

"Electronic Frontier Foundation," Arthur suggested, opening the door for her. "Comic Book Defense Fund." 

"Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence."

"Who?" 

"Look them up, darling. Your life will be better for knowing. Trust me." 

They were safely on their way in a cab out to the West End when Morgana said, "Actually, Gwen and I have been talking." 

"Nothing good can come of that," Arthur murmured. He'd always been puzzled by their friendship. Gwen was, by far, the nicest woman he had ever dated, while Morgana was the most conniving person he knew. He supposed they balanced each other out, in a way that he and Gwen could have, if they hadn't also been so terribly mismatched romantically. 

Morgana slapped him on the arm and said, "Don't be rude. We were talking a few months ago about..."

This hesitation was out of character for Morgana. Arthur turned and looked at her properly. "What?" 

"Well. About starting our own press." 

Arthur blinked. "Your own press?" 

Morgana nodded. "Just a few titles a year to start with, and maybe an online magazine."

"Is that wise?" Arthur asked. "I mean, I support independent presses as much as the next left-leaning intellectual, but publishing is a risky venture these days." 

"Well, it's not going to get any better if we wait," Morgana said. "There are a few American models that are doing all right for themselves. If Uther's left me anything, we can use it as startup cash. Gwen and I thought, between our contacts and experience--"

"Between the two of you, you could rule the world," Arthur said. "I don't doubt that." 

Morgana smiled a little. "Glad you've noticed." 

Arthur smiled at her, trying to feel happy for Morgana. "You'll do fine. I don't know where the hell I'm going to find another manager who puts up with me, though." 

"This is probably months or years away, Arthur, don't start brooding yet. Besides, who knows? Uther probably left me out of the will entirely."

"He may have left us both out. You weren't the only to burn bridges with him." Arthur swallowed past the thickness that had suddenly collected in his throat. Even though he knew it was stupid, the words came out anyway: "You do know that he--he did love you." 

"God, Arthur, must you?" Morgana snapped. "I was his illegitimate daughter, if anything, he felt deeply ashamed over my existence."

"Ashamed of himself," Arthur said. "Not of you." 

"Please," Morgana scoffed. "Why are you're defending him, anyway? The man practically disowned you. He doesn't deserve an ounce of forgiveness from either of us, not after the things he did." 

"He came around eventually. And he never disowned you, once the truth was out." The truth was, Uther had always been indulgent when it came to Morgana, in a way that he never was with Arthur. He never would have thrown her out on her arse for being queer. 

"No, he just failed to mention the fact that he'd contributed half of my DNA," said Morgana.

"I'm not saying he didn't fuck up. All I'm saying is... is that he was trying," Arthur finished weakly. "At least with me. If he'd thought for a second that you'd let him in to your life--"

"Lucky for me, I'm smarter than that," Morgana said sharply.

Arthur knew better than to respond to that. They settled into an uneasy silence for a while, both of them looking out the window as they traveled through Westminster, over the canal. 

"I'm not going to cry, if that's what you're thinking," Morgana said, her gaze firmly pointed away from Arthur. She was folded into herself, legs and arms crossed and angled away from him. "Just so you know. I refuse to cry over Uther bloody Pendragon."

"Well, I am," Arthur said, deadpan. Morgana swiveled to look at him, and he added, "On the inside. Weeping bucketloads." 

Morgana glared at him, then let out a shocked bark of laughter and, alarmingly, brushed at her eyes, completely contrary to what she'd just said. 

"It's odd, isn't it?" Morgana said quietly. "That he's really gone. I thought I'd be dancing on his grave, but all I feel is..." She shook her head. "All I feel is let down."

"It's occurred to me," Arthur said slowly, because he'd been thinking this since the funeral and the thought had been driving him mad, both with its tenacity and its ridiculousness. "That I'm an orphan now. And I'm fully aware of how idiotic that is, to be calling myself an orphan when I'm thirty-four bloody years old. But I can't get it out of my head."

Morgana gazed at him. He wondered if he was about to get a good bollocksing, which he knew he richly deserved, talking shite about orphans to a woman who'd known grief since childhood. 

"Well. Welcome to the club," Morgana said primly. "Just remember that I outrank you, since I've lost three parents so far, and you've only lost the two."

* * *

At the meeting, they learned that Arthur got a sizeable share of Uther's assets and holdings. He also got the flat in Kensington (which he told the solicitors to sell) and the cottage in Devon (which he wanted to keep, despite the fact that it was falling apart). 

Morgana, on the other hand, had received enough money to create a publishing empire. 

"You should have seen her face," Arthur told Merlin, on the phone outside the solicitors' offices. He had a Dunhill in one hand, the umbrella in the other, and the phone cradled awkwardly by his shoulder. "She looked like Carrie after the pig blood." 

Merlin had made him watch the movie that winter, because Merlin had a thing for Brian de Palma's horror movies and another thing for making Arthur sit through terrible films.

"Why would he do that?" Merlin asked. 

"It's been a long time since I pretended to understand Uther," Arthur said, taking a deep drag on the cigarette. 

"Are you... are you smoking?" Merlin asked. 

"God, don't start. I already got an earful from Morgana about finishing that first pack and buying another."

"I'm not saying a thing, just..." 

"What?" Arthur snapped. 

"Nothing, I guess," Merlin said. "Are you coming home?" 

"Not yet," Arthur sighed. "Morgana and I decided to go and pack up whatever we wanted from the Kensington flat before the estate agents come through and put it all on the market." 

"Should I... do you want me to come?" 

"Christ, yes," Arthur said, relieved. He hadn't thought to ask, but having Merlin there to diffuse the tension between he, Morgana, and Uther's ghost sounded like a godsend. 

"Should I bring anything? Takeout?" 

"Please. Curry place by the flat?"

"Does Morgana still like her vindaloo hot enough to incinerate her sinuses?" 

Arthur chuckled. "Of course. Get an extra order of naan bread, too." 

Even with the smells of curry and naan, the flat still seemed ghostly. The cleaning woman had come through the day after Uther died, so there were no physical reminders of him: no damp towels on the floor, no dishes in the kitchen, no ring of hair in the sink from where he'd shaved that morning. Miriam had also cleaned out the refrigerator at Arthur's request, and all the nonperishable food had been taken to foodbanks. The place was spotless, but Uther's ghost lurked in odd corners. Like the pile of newspapers by the kitchen door, starting to curl at the edges in the damp air. Arthur looked at the headlines from a week ago, and imagined Uther sitting down with his morning cup of tea and doctor-mandated oatmeal with this copy of the Financial Times in his hands. 

Arthur glanced at the headlines. _Ghana uprgraded to B by Fitch. Nestlé in negotiations to buy Ferrero._ It was like reading news in another language, one his father spoke fluently and that Arthur had refused to learn. He wondered, not for the first time, what his life would have been like if he hadn't stubbornly refused to go into business. 

"Let's open a bottle of wine," Morgana said. "And turn on that ridiculous fireplace." 

Both the chairs and the couch in the sitting room were hideously uncomfortable, so they ended up eating on the floor in front of the gas fireplace. Morgana told Merlin about the press she wanted to start with Gwen, or rather, that she would start, since she was now fabulously rich. 

"Are you fabulously rich, too?" Merlin asked Arthur.

"Arthur was practically landed gentry anyway," Morgana said, leaning against the couch with her glass of wine in her hands. "He was smart enough to wait until his trust fund was all his before coming out as a queer intellectual and getting disowned."

"There are some assets that are being held in trust," Arthur said, ignoring her. "Not sure exactly how much, or the kind of access I'll have to them. And there's this flat, and a cottage in Devon." 

"You're that much closer to being able to follow through on your threats to run away and live on a yacht the next time someone threatens you with a book tour," Morgana said. 

Merlin laughed, but Arthur just rolled his eyes. Her teasing was starting to wear on him. 

"Be right back," he said, standing up and setting aside his aloo patha. "Have to use the loo." 

Except after he'd used the toilet, he found himself wandering down the hallway, further into the house. He'd been to his father's flat a few times, spent Christmas mornings and Boxing Day luncheons here in short, circumscribed visits. But most of it was strange to him. The flat was relatively large, especially compared to his and Merlin's place, and Uther had never shown him the whole thing. 

He found himself standing at a closed door, hesitating to open it. _I own all this,_ he reminded himself. So he opened the door, peeked around the jamb, and found a guest bedroom. Entirely innocuous and boring. Arthur sighed, unsure what he'd been expecting. A BDSM dungeon? The entrance to the Batcave? 

He stepped inside, taking a look around. There was a single bed, a low table beside it with a lamp, a rather unfortunately upholstered loveseat, and, surprisingly, a bookshelf, filled with a colorful and mismatched variety of books. 

Arthur moved closer to examine the contents of bookshelf. There were hardcovers with dust jackets, a few old cloth-bound editions with the letters on the spines faded into illegibility, and quite a few paperbacks, some of them--and this made him laugh, a little hysterically--with titles like _To Catch A Duke_ and _The Sheik's Secret Bride._ Had his father actually been reading bodice-rippers while scoffing at Arthur's career in science fiction? 

Not all of it was completely objectionable though. There was quite a bit of Le Carré and Lovesy nestled in amongst the romances, all of the Brontes, the complete Sherlock Holmes. Still, Arthur thought, he never would have pegged his father as an Austen lover. He pulled out the well-worn copy of _Pride and Prejudice,_ thumbing through it. He was about to put it back when he saw the bookplate on the front cover, declaring that the book belonged to Igraine de Bois. 

Arthur looked at the bookshelf, then looked back at the book in his hand. He brushed his hand over the the bookplate: it showed a linecut of woman in princess garb sitting by a window, a candle in front of her, a starry night with a crescent moon behind her. His mother's name was written in a neat, narrow script. 

He'd never seen her handwriting before. 

Arthur had read nearly every book he could in the houses he'd shared with his father, even the expensive leather-bound books that had dwelt in Uther's study. Uther had managed to hide these forty or so books from him for the past thirty-four years, which meant he'd deliberately kept them from Arthur. Even now, they were kept in a room where Arthur never went on his visits, that Uther had never bothered to show him. It was such a small, petty, and selfish thing, so like his father that Arthur shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. Surprised and hurt and furious.

Arthur shut the book and gently put it back on the shelf, lest the wave of anger he felt cause him to tear the pages. He hesitated, willing his anger back down, until he could pull down another book. _Black Beauty,_ an older children's edition, with large typface and a faded dustjacket. He opened to the title page: another bookplate, this one with a phoenix. And again, _Igraine de Bois_ written beneath "This Book Belongs To," in a clumsy, childish hand. 

"Arthur?" Merlin's voice. 

Arthur took a breath. "I'm in here," he said. 

The door creaked open. "What are you doing in here?." 

"It's my flat now," Arthur replied. "I can go where I like in it." 

Merlin blinked. "True. Though I can think of more interesting places to visit than a... what is this, a guest bedroom?" 

Arthur nodded, wishing Merlin would leave him alone, but not wanting to be an arse and say so. Merlin had already been ridiculously indulgent with him since Uther had died. Arthur didn't want to try his patience. 

Merlin stepped inside softly, looking around. They'd all been moving and speaking quietly since they'd arrived, as though not wanting to stir whatever ghost or remnant of one might still inhabiting the flat. Merlin, having the same inclinations towards snooping as Arthur, immediately came over to the bookcase. 

"Check Uther out," he said, grinning. "Secret romance reader." 

"They were my mother's," Arthur said. 

Merlin's grin dropped off his face, as though expressions and emotions were something as easily mishandled as a slippery plate. He knelt down beside Arthur--and when had Arthur given up standing and sat down on the floor? He couldn't remember. That was a little worrying. 

Merlin ran a finger down _The Turn of the Screw,_ then touched _The Yellow Wallpaper_ and _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ next to it. "She had a bit of a dark streak," Merlin said. He did this sometimes: pathologized a person's reading taste. He said it was a habit that everyone who'd worked in second-hand bookshops developed. 

Arthur laughed. "How else would she have stayed married to my father?" 

"She was still a romantic, though. Believed in love." He tapped a hardcover version of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. "Nobody reads Andersen if they don't believe in the power of love." 

"His fairy tales had horribly sad endings. _The Little Match Girl?"_

"Happy endings don't have any meaning if that's all anyone ever writes. But love runs through all his stories, like a force of nature. It can save his characters, or it can kill them." 

Merlin looked at him, and there must have been something--some expression or emotion--on Arthur's face, because Merlin immediately put on his _I'm concerned about you_ look and laid a hand on Arthur's arm. 

"Arthur?" he asked. 

"I'm fine," Arthur said, shaking Merlin off. "My father hid my mother's books from me for the last thirty-four years, and he left my half-sister close to three million pounds, because he thought he could posthumously buy her forgiveness." He fished the pack of Dunhills out of his trouser pocket. His hands were shaking, he was so furious. "Also, I've started to smoke again. That... that fucking _asshole,"_ Arthur spat, all too aware that it was the first time he'd ever called his father such outside of the privacy of his own head. He usually left the name-calling to Morgana. 

"Arthur," Merlin said, grabbing at his shoulders. "Will you--"

"No," Arthur said shortly. "I can't. I need to go. For a walk." 

"Arthur--" 

Arthur stood up, shaking Merlin free, and stormed down the hall and back to the sitting room with its gas fireplace and its two horribly uncomfortable wingback chairs that nobody, probably in the entire time that Uther had owned the flat, had sat in. He ignored Morgana calling his name, Merlin making concerned noises behind him. He grabbed his coat from the coat hook, knowing that it had his wallet and a lighter in it, and that was really all he needed. That and five minutes alone, for fuck's sake.


	11. In Wine, Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for discussion of (past) drug and alcohol abuse.

"Shit," Merlin said. "Shit, shit, shit." 

"Merlin, calm down," Morgana said, tugging him away from the door. 

"I should go after him," Merlin said, even though he doubted himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Arthur wasn't the type to storm off in a huff, and Merlin didn't know how he'd react if Merlin followed him. The two of them argued nearly constantly, even passionately sometimes, but never about things like this. It was always about Merlin leaving his shoes in a clutter by the door or Arthur's utterly illogical organization of their books or the meaning of justice in early pulp detective stories. 

This wasn't even a fight. Or if it was, it was between Arthur and his father, who had never fought fair while he was alive and now had the unfair advantage of being dead. Arthur didn't even have a face to shout at, just a memory. 

"You should sit down and finish this bottle of wine with me." She was tiny, Morgana was, but she managed to shove him away from the foyer and back into the living room, where the fireplace was still burning with fake cheer on its fake logs. 

"It's pouring rain, I should at least get him an umbrella," Merlin said, even as he sat back down. "I should do something." 

"There's nothing to be done," Morgana said, uncorking the bottle and filling his glass. "What skeleton did he find in Uther's closet this time?" 

He balked at telling her for a moment, sure that Arthur wouldn't want her to know. She also had a way of digging up the truth and rubbing Arthur's nose in it when secrets were kept from her, so Merlin said, "Igraine's books." 

Morgana looked up at him, holding out his wine. "Her books?" 

Merlin sat down on the rug next to her. "It seems he had a whole bookshelf of her books since she died, but never let Arthur know."

Morgana looked aghast. "That... that fucking asshole." 

"That's what Arthur said," said Merlin. He took a large gulp of wine, barely tasting it. 

"Out loud?" Morgana asked. "Well, maybe there's hope for him yet." 

Her eyes were bright and glassy and a little bit bloodshot, and Merlin realized that she was drunk. There was already one empty wine bottle, on its side on the rug. The second was only half full. He'd finished one glass, Arthur had drunk, at most, two. Which meant that Morgana probably had had an entire one to herself. He remembered the way she had gotten drunk at Uther's wake, the way that each successive drink had made her sharper and colder. She and Arthur apparently had swapped drinking habits. 

"I do mean that," Morgana said, "in the best way possible. If that helps."

"It really doesn't," Merlin said, rubbing at his face. 

Morgana poked at her abandoned curry. "The very best thing I can say about Arthur is that he's not his father. He never was, despite both of their best intentions. Uther was cruel and pragmatic and selfish. Arthur's stubborn and emotionally stunted and a snob--" 

"Really not helping," Merlin said through gritted teeth. 

"--But he's also sensitive and believes the best of people. He thought that Uther was trying to meet him halfway." Morgana laughed, a sad, desolate bark. "And maybe he was, but Uther moved in inches, and Arthur would have moved the world." 

Merlin thought of Arthur, out there in the rain, walking through the streets of Kensington trying to keep a cigarette lit in a downpour. If Merlin left right now, would he be able to find him? Merlin had never had trouble connecting with Arthur before--even at Liminal Con, when all he knew of Arthur was the he was a gigantic prat with a hard-on for Charles Dickens--he and Arthur seemed to zero in on each other. They both had an unfailing sixth sense of where the other was concerned. Merlin had never doubted their relationship before, but in the week since Uther died, it was like a stranger had moved into Arthur's body, and Merlin had been shut out. 

"Do you know..." Morgana began, "Did Arthur tell you about how I found out? About Uther and my mother?" 

Merlin looked at her. Her cheeks were bright pink, and her eyes were glassy, reflecting the light from the fire as she stared into it. 

"He didn't." 

"My sister." 

Merlin leaned forward. "Arthur has a sister?" 

Morgana looked at him wearily. "No, Arthur just has me. I have a half-sister named Morgause. Ten years older, was already off at school by the time I was born. After our parents died, she wrote me sometimes, but never really visited. A few years ago, she thought she could blackmail Uther with a twenty year-old paternity test that Gorlois asked for, then promptly ignored because he apparently had grown rather fond of me."

"How did you find out about it?" 

"Uther refused to deal with her. Had her thrown out of his office, threatened her with libel suits, all that. So she told me everything, just like she'd threatened. And when I went back to Uther, screamed at him, threw things at him, he didn't say anything. Just looked at me like I'd broken his heart. He said he was sorry, and his face, Merlin when he said it--" She broke off, downing the rest of the wine in her glass. After a moment, she said, "It must have been the first time in his life he'd ever apologized for anything. He looked like he'd been sick in his mouth. I walked away and that was the last time we spoke." 

They watched the flames in silence for a while, pouring themselves fresh glasses of wine. "Fathers really are the worst," Merlin said. 

Morgana raised her glass. "Drink to that."

Merlin touched his glass to hers. "Like you said in that epic text at the hospital. The ones that leave and the ones that stay and the ones you can't ever quite forgive," Merlin recited. The line had been running through his mind ever since. 

"It wasn't epic, it was embarrassing," Morgana said. Her cheeks, already glowing from the wine, turned pinker. She finished off her glass and said, "Which was yours?" 

"My what?" Merlin said. 

"Your father. Did he leave? Stay? Scar you? I know he's dead now, you and Arthur went to his funeral last year." 

Morgana was shitfaced, Merlin decided. She'd lost the few scraps of tact she had. "My father? He left. Hitched a ride out for Bristol without a glance back when my mum was four months pregnant."

"The worst," Morgana said solemnly. 

"No," Merlin said. "It was for the best, really." He looked down at his wine glass, which had only a swallow left in it, and said by way of explanation, "Alcoholic." 

"Really?" Morgana said. "I'm surprised you drink." 

"Liquor was never my drug of choice." He put his glass to his lips and tilted the last of the wine into his mouth. "I only met him after he got sober, but my mum told me some stories." 

"Like what?" Morgana asked, curling up around her glass and half-finished curry. She'd taken off her high heels at some point, and her feet, clad in nude hosiery, looked cold and vulnerable. 

"Oh, you know. Sleeping in the doorway because he'd been too drunk to get his keys in the door, or coming home with bruises and bloody knuckles and not remembering how he got them. My mum's friends would tell her that they'd seen him all over some slag at the pub, both of them barely able to stand." 

Morgana made a soft noise, of disgust or sympathy, he couldn't quite tell. "I can't believe she told you that," she said. 

Merlin shrugged. "She didn't want to. She was trying to scare me sober."

_I can't love an addict again, Merlin,_ she'd told him, _my heart can't take it._ She'd been crying freely, and so had he, in the grotty ward at Whitchurch with a dozen other people in beds around them, curtains barely giving them the illusion of privacy as he apologized over and over, _sorry, Mum, I'm so sorry,_ and all she could say was that she'd heard apologies before, had heard excuses and promises and all the rest. 

__Withdrawal symptoms were nothing compared to seeing his mum's heart broken and knowing it was his fault. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him--and also, in some hard-to-describe ways, one of the best. There was something comforting in being able to point to a specific day on the calendar and go, _That's it, that's the worst day I've ever had, the lowest I've ever been.__ _

__"Merlin?" Morgana said. "Your phone's ringing."_ _

__"It is? Shit," Merlin said, clawing at his trouser pocket. "Arthur? I'm here, where are you? Are you all right?"_ _

__"I'm soaked to the bone and probably on my way to dying of pneumonia," he answered._ _

__"So he's fine, then," Morgana said, having overhead. Merlin flapped a hand at her, shooing her away._ _

__"I'm at the flat, but I apparently left my keys behind."_ _

__"When he stormed out in a fit of pique?" Morgana said._ _

__"Would you shut up?" Merlin hissed to her. " Are you all right? Aside from dying of pneumonia."_ _

__"I'm fine, Merlin," Arthur said. He sounded tired, a bone-deep weariness that Merlin recognized from talking to him on bad nights during his last tour._ _

__Merlin grabbed his coat. "I'll catch a cab over there. Why don't you wait in the pub on the corner? Get something warm to drink."_ _

__"All right," he said, sounding subdued. "I'll be at the pub."_ _

__Merlin hung up, and looked at Morgana. "Do you want to come along? You can stay at ours, tonight, if you want."_ _

__Morgana smiled tiredly. "No, I think Arthur and I have had enough of each other for one day. I'll find my own way home." She sighed, and added softly. "I always have."_ _

__Merlin rolled his eyes. "You and Arthur, god, you're both such maudlin drunks."_ _

__"Oh, fuck off," Morgana said. She kicked at him and missed by a good foot and a half. "Go find my little brother and make sure he's not actually going to die like some romantic heroine."_ _

__Merlin helped her up and gave her a hug. "Will do," he promised._ _

__She patted his cheek. "He's lucky to have you."_ _

* * *

From: gwaine.lacroix@lionsgate.co.uk  
To: wart@arthurpendragon.com  
SUBJ: Producer position on BOY OUTSIDE adaptation  
14/03/14

Arthur,  
I can't imagine what it would take you to actually leave London if Morgana's not dragging you away from it kicking and screaming, but Lance has been asking about bringing you on as a producer and not just a consultant. He liked what you brought to the script, and thinks if you're up for it, B.O. (and good job on the initials there, mate) would really benefit from you taking a greater role in its production. 

I know, I know, it sounds like a total line. But Lance is one of those incredibly rare people in the industry, THE SINCERE AND HUMBLE DIRECTOR. Don't get me wrong, he can hold his own on set or when he's dealing with the studio toffs, otherwise he'd have been stomped beneath their Italian leather boots long ago. But Lance, despite his porn-actor name, is actually someone I think you'd enjoy working with. And not that I want to add to your already overinflated ego, for fear of seeing it pop like a balloon some day, but Lance loves the source material. He's already fought for it. 

But yeah, it would require you to be in Vancouver, at least during filming, plus some legwork at other times. And that would require you to leave London, and we all know what a terrible, heartbreaking, sacrifice that is on your part. Wanker. 

Nobody needs an answer for a while, so give it some time and consideration before you break his heart and refuse. 

Gwaine

* * *

Arthur sat at the bar, phone in one hand, hot toddy warming the other, rain water dripping down his collar, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.

He owed Merlin an apology. Probably Morgana as well, though that was mostly for form's sake. Otherwise, she'd be mentioning this episode the next time she wanted to mortify him into doing some horrible publicity thing. 

Arthur felt stupid, and feeling stupid was something he wasn't used to, and had never suffered easily. It was as if his father's death had triggered some sort of inner time travel, and he'd become, in effect, a seventeen year old again. He couldn't control his emotions. Getting out of bed and leaving the house required a monumental effort. Interacting with other people--even Merlin--was like navigating a minefield, fraught with the possibility of disaster. Just being in his own body, having to deal with the constant business of eating and sleeping and shitting and breathing and thinking--and thinking was probably the worst, followed closely by feeling--was a fucking chore. It exhausted him. 

Arthur never claimed to be the most self-aware individual, but even he knew that he was probably depressed, and that it was perfectly logical to be. It would have taken months and reams of notebook paper and far more alcohol than his liver could handle to successfully sort through his feelings about Uther, and that was while the man was still alive. Now that he was dead, and Arthur was being ambushed by things like his dead mother's book collection, really, going into a depressive episode and existential crisis was a perfectly sane reaction. 

But Arthur just couldn't drum up any sympathy for himself. He hated how he felt and the way he'd been acting. He hated that everyone else was putting up with it. He wanted to slap some sense into himself, but he wasn't quite sure how. 

Which led him here, to a bar, rainwater sloshing around his shoes and dripping off shirt cuffs, reading and re-reading an email that had been sent weeks ago inviting him to run off to bloody Canada. And the worse part was, he was actually considering it. 

Arthur pocketed his phone and curled both hands around the hot toddy, sipping at it. Gwaine was right, he hated leaving London. This was, and always would be, home for him. He'd thought for a few years that he could be happy in Oxford, that he'd continue in academia arguing about critical theory and literature until he was old and fat and bald. But he'd realized, while in the last feverish throes of writing _Boy Outside_ , that he'd come to Oxford to run away. And while he could be happy there, he'd never be able to forget that.

So why the hell was he considering running away again? 

"Arthur?" 

Arthur turned. Merlin was standing a few feet away, rain dripping off his fringe and beading on his coat. He looked worried and a little lost, but that turned to relief as soon as Arthur stood and said, "Hi. Sorry." 

Merlin walked forward and hugged him. "Are you all right? Jesus, Arthur." 

"I'm fine," he said, hugging him back. Then, because maybe Merlin hadn't heard him, he said it again: "I'm sorry." 

"Don't worry about it," he replied. "You've nothing to be sorry for."

_Not yet,_ Arthur thought, thinking of Gwaine's email.


	12. Fool's Leap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Merlin's private files.
> 
> Filed under WORDS > MUSING > PRIVATE > TAROT PROMPTS > THE FOOL

We all carve clean, unbroken lines through our lives, marking them with events, sea-changes. A child's birth. Graduating from university. Hitting bottom and starting the long crawl back up. 

When I woke up in the hospital when I was nineteen, I blinked my eyes, noted the IV taped to the crook of my elbow, and realized, despite my half-assed efforts towards self-destruction, that I was alive, conscious, and fundamentally different. I had taken a dull, dirty knife and slit my life into two segments: before the overdose and after.

I'd never be allowed a second chance again. I blew all my luck surviving a batch of shitty heroin.

I can't help but love the idiot that I was, though, even when I want to kick the everloving shite out of him. He shied away from nothing, stumbling towards death like a drunk lover. I remember when destruction was both the means and the end. It was beautiful, in a way. I made a home in that kind of darkness, and learned not to flinch away from the worst, hardest parts. It's informed my life and my art. Nearly killing myself made me a much better human being.

I almost died doing so, alienated my mother and friends, failed out of uni. I'm not sure what to think of that tradeoff. 

Could I live through it again? Not the overdose--no drugs for me since waking up that pale afternoon in Whitchurch Hospital. Could I split my life down the middle again, open a fault line in my history and leap across it?

Could I? If I had to?


	13. The Haunting

**Arthur Pendragon** @RealPendragon  
Thanks for all the kind words after my father's death. It's been hard, but

Pending Tweet: saved 18:21, 04 May 16.

* * *

But what? It had been hard, full stop. Random well-wishes from strangers on the internet hadn't made Arthur feel less like drowning himself in the bathtub. If anything, getting tweets like "my dad died last year, know how u feel, sorry for yr loss" made him feel even worse. Did everyone have to equate one person's grief with their own? Couldn't it be a private thing? 

On the other hand, Arthur had been communing with his demons in private for weeks now. No tweets, no blog posts, no press releases besides the ones his father's company had put out. No quotes for any of the business magazines that had written profiles of his father, nor the obituaries. Hell, he couldn't even write in his own journal, it was all just like this bloody tweet: half-finished sentences, hacked together thoughts. 

He couldn't write. For more than three weeks, he hadn't written a bloody word. He'd lost the ability to string a sentence together. 

What the hell was he supposed to be if he wasn't a writer? 

He closed Tweetdeck and texted Morgana: _I will pay you £10 to write a tweet for me so the internet will stop speculating that I'm dead or in a mental ward._

Arthur dropped the phone and looked around at the bedroom. He and Merlin had lived there for just over a year now, and all of their things were thoroughly mixed together. They had never bothered to divide it up into halves. Arthur used the closet and Merlin had a dresser, there was a table on which they both dumped their daily detritus, the spare change and receipts, sets of bookshelves that were constantly overflowing. Even all mixed up like that, Arthur had no trouble picking out the messes that he'd left. There were piles of laundry in the corner, empty coffee cups, books spine-up on every surface. 

_I'm a mess,_ Arthur thought, _in more ways than one._

His phone buzzed. Arthur looked at Morgana's response. _You already pay me far more than that to patrol your online presence._

Of course, she couldn't make anything easy. Arthur tossed the phone on the bedside table and lay down on the bed, still unmade from that morning. The sheets weren't particularly clean either. He should probably do something. About the room. Clean it up a bit. 

His phone buzzed again. _Trouble writing?_

Morgana was far too perceptive for anyone's good. 

He stared at his phone, trying to think of a reply that would reassure her rather than raise her suspicions. He used to be so good at handling her, redirecting her creepily on-point intuitions to other targets. He and Morgana had always been good at manipulating each other, pushing each other's buttons. 

_Yes,_ he typed out, and sent it. 

"Please don't call," he said to the phone. When she did, he didn't answer.

* * *

"I hate London pubs," Merlin said, slumping down on the stool. "The music is shit."

"I really don't believe that it's worse than in Cardiff," Gwaine said, because despite his permanent erection for Marxist class analysis, he was still a massive snob. If he hadn't been a postmodern realist who hated nearly all genre writing, Merlin thought, he and Arthur would have probably become one of those terrifying media power couples. Instead, an argument about Mary Shelly drove them apart after two weeks of formal dating. 

"It's shit there too, but recognizable shit," Merlin said. "Not like... what is this? What do you even call this?" 

"House music," Gwaine said, grinning sidewise at him. 

"Which is a catchall name for dicking about on a computer. I'd rather hear Englebert Humperdink." 

"Bite your tongue, Merlin," Gwaine said. 

"Or you'll bite it for me?" Merlin asked. Gwaine was annoyingly opportunistic when it came to inserting sexual innuendo into conversations. It was best to get it out before he had a chance to. 

Gwaine grinned. "Or I'll have it out. And throw the rest of you away, like a--"

"Like a nightingale at a Roman feast," Merlin finished, smiling despite himself. "Are you really quoting Tom fucking Stoppard at me?" 

"You'd make a good Rosencrantz," Gwaine said, sipping from his beer. "Happy-go-lucky despite everything, until you're not. Speaking of, how's Guildenstern these days?" 

"Well as can be expected," Merlin answered. It had been his stock answer to all questions about Arthur's well-being since Uther had died. 

The problem was this: Arthur hated to share the burden of his emotional life with anyone. Merlin had wormed his way in to Arthur's very private life through persistence, arguments, sex, and an aggressive campaign of small affectionate gestures, which Arthur pretended to be embarrassed by but not-so-secretly loved. Arthur's heart was a very, very complex mechanism, but all the gears were hidden beneath the veneer, and very well-guarded. 

All this meant that Merlin was now treated as an ambassador to the People's Republic of Arthur; he regularly crossed the DMZ of Arthur's stony silences, and was the only source of unbiased information to all their friends and acquaintances. 

It was tiresome; hence the canned answer of "Well as can be expected." It was all most people wanted to hear anyway. 

"And how well is that?" Gwaine asked. "What kind of expectations am I meant to have?" 

But then there were dickheads like Gwaine, who actually knew Arthur. Who not only quoted Stoppard, but occasionally spoke like one of his characters as well. 

"Gwaine," Merlin said. "Can I at least finish my drink before giving the State of Arthur address?" 

"Touchy," Gwaine said, but let him drink in peace for a moment before speaking again. "I didn't just invite you out to grill you about Arthur." 

"Really."

"I wanted to see how you were doing yourself." 

_"Really,"_ Merlin said again, letting even more sarcasm color his voice.

"Yes, really. Morgana said you'd lost a stone."

Merlin rolled his eyes. "She's full of it." 

"Agreed. I'd say it's more like seven or eight pounds. Probably not more than ten."

Merlin sipped his beer and didn't answer. It had been eight pounds.

"Having a career in the film industry develops your eye for small details," Gwaine said. "Probably the same way writing does. You can't stop drinking the world in through your eyes, zooming in on tiny things and creating entire stories from them. Like her, the woman at the end of the bar." Gwaine nodded, and Merlin glanced towards the end of the bar, the woman sitting there. She was dark-haired, dressed nice, made-up--but not like she was going out, more like she was just coming out of work. 

"What about her?" 

"How much can you tell about her just from that quick look you just had?" Gwaine asked. 

"Sweet fuck all, Gwaine. Stop arsing about--" 

"Don't play coy with me, Merlin. You genius writers are all the same, taking people-watching past a creepy hobby and into the realm of art. You already made up a story for her, right?" 

Merlin rolled his eyes, but Gwaine had a point. Merlin could easily imagine the woman coming from her job--something corporate, and since this was Soho, probably something related to media--coming straight to this bar. She was alone, but didn't look like she was waiting for someone. She'd been staring into her drink, which was half-empty, ice cubes mostly melted. She didn't want to go home, hadn't been able to stand being at work another minute, had to escape somewhere, so she'd come in here. Trying to while away a few minutes of misery, numb it with a drink and the noise of other people. Trouble at home, Merlin wondered, or trouble at work, or maybe her entire life had gone to shit. She looked so lonely. 

"It's all shite, though," Merlin said. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes. Whatever I'm imagining is probably way off. It's a fun way to pass the time, but in the end, it doesn't mean anything. " 

"Won't know unless you ask, though, right?" Gwaine said. He took a long pull off his beer, and Merlin suddenly worried that the idiot was actually about to go and ask the woman why she looked so miserable. Instead, he set down his half-empty beer and faced Merlin. 

"Oh, fuck," Merlin said, realizing what was about to happen. 

"So here is what I'm seeing," Gwaine said. His voice was light but his eyes were sharp and commanding. "You've lost weight. Your wrists are about a million times knobblier than they normally are. You've got bags under your eyes. And your lovely boyfriend, who also happens to be my ex and a good mate and a professional contact, hasn't answered a single one of my emails or calls since his father died. Not even to accuse me of trying to bait him into an argument about the Romantics."

"Were you trying to bait him?" Merlin asked, honestly curious.

"Of course I was. If anything can get Arthur talking, it's an argument." 

That's what Merlin had always thought, too. Turned out it was more complicated than that. 

"So, drink your beer, Merlin. Then tell me if you're actually okay, and if there's anything I can do to help." 

The sincerity in Gwaine's voice caught Merlin off guard, hooking into him. He drank his beer, listened to the thumping of shitty house music, and wondered why he'd been treating Arthur's feelings like a state secret. 

"He's depressed," Merlin said. "And not in the way he usually gets. I've seen that and this is different. He's not writing." 

"How do you mean?" Gwaine said. "'Cause there's not writing and there's _not writing._ "

"I think I mean the latter one, then. I think he's trying to and he can't." 

Gwaine sighed. "That's bad. When he's not writing, Arthur gets... Well, you've seen how he gets."

Yes, Merlin had seen it. Too much of it: Arthur with bags under his eyes and stooped shoulders, Arthur speaking in clipped monosyllabic sentences, Arthur wearing pajamas past nine in the morning, Arthur listening to far too much nineties emo Brit pop--

"You still haven't answered how you're doing, you know," Gwaine said. He signaled the bartender for more drinks, and Merlin noticed that his beer was gone. "I've known Arthur when he's locked himself into a world of shit and misery, and I know from experience that his bad moods tend to leak like radiation out of nuclear plant."

The bartender brought them two more beers, along with two shots of whiskey. Gwaine had decided to get him pissed, apparently. 

"I'm all right," Merlin said. "Wasn't my father that died. I mean, he did, but that was last year."

Gwaine picked up the two shot glasses, handing one to Merlin. "To fathers." 

Merlin wondered if alcohol was necessary to be able to talk about one's father. At least among his friends, that seemed to be the case. The whiskey burned going down his throat.

"It's strange," Merlin said. "When he died--my da, I mean--I cried. Full-on sobbing, snot everywhere, the kind of crying where you worry you're going to die of it. It was so exhausting, I just passed out mid-sob. Slept for six hours, woke up. And I felt okay. Still sad, and I mooned about a lot for the next month, stared off into space and had really deep thoughts. But I was okay."

"There's nothing weird about that," Gwaine said. 

"No," Merlin agreed. "The weird part is how since Uther died--"

"God rest the bloody asshole," Gwaine muttered. No love had been lost between him and Uther. 

"Right?" Merlin said. "He was a fucking prick, but I've become sad all over again. Not for him, and not just for Arthur, but for me. You know what I mean?" 

"Fucking Uther Pendragon," Gwaine said. "Can't even quietly die without dragging everyone into the pits of despair." 

"Death is such shit," Merlin said.

"Truer words, my friend," Gwaine said. "Should be the title of your next story." 

"It can open up with two idiots in a bar," Merlin said, drinking from his beer. He swallowed, then gestured to it. "Arguing over whether their glasses are half-empty or half-full."

"It can be an updated version of 'Masque of Red Death'. Two wankers indulging in their vice while the world deteriorates around them." 

"I thought you hated Poe."

"I do, believe me. All the hand-wringing and laudanum dreams, ugh." 

Merlin giggled, and then realized it was the first time he'd laughed in recent memory, and promptly felt like shit again. "Fuck," he said softly. 

Gwaine was looking at him sadly. "And we were doing so well there for a moment." 

Merlin swallowed the last of his beer. "I should probably get going," he said. 

"Sure you don't want to stay for another?" Gwaine asked. 

There was an itch under Merlin's skin, one that he recognized from being young; that urge for obliteration, for annihilating all responsibility for one's actions in a great big piss-up. He hadn't been that person in a long time, and he didn't particularly want to be again, but things had just seemed so much simpler when you were on the far side of a couple of lines or a palmful of pills. 

"I do, actually, which is exactly why I'm not going to," Merlin said. 

"Wiser man than I," Gwaine said. 

"Hard lesson learned well," Merlin replied, remembering the taste of the hospital, how cold his mother's hands had felt when she'd come into his room, grabbing at him and asking him all the questions he didn't know then how to answer: _why did you, how could you, didn't you think--_

And then the one question he could answer: _will you do it again?_

_No, mum,_ he'd sighed. _I'm finished with that._

"Take care of yourself, Merlin," Gwaine said. He stood up and hugged Merlin. It wasn't an unusual gesture from Gwaine, who was one of those effortlessly masculine men who just oozed sensuality and would flirt with a rock, if given the chance. He folded his long arms around Merlin's shoulders and Merlin wound his around Gwaine's waist, and something in that easily affectionate gesture slid between his ribs like a knife. How he gotten so lonely without realizing it? 

"I will," Merlin said. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. 

"And tell Lord Byron over there to stop being a git and email me so I know he's alive." 

Merlin laughed, pushing Gwaine away. "I'll do that too." 

Out in the driving rain, hurrying towards the tube station, Merlin prodded at the sore place he'd been hiding from himself, feeling out the dimensions of his own loneliness, wondering how, in the space of a month, his world had so rapidly gone to shit.

* * *

Arthur was half-asleep when he heard Merlin coming up the stairs to their flat. More than half; two thirds, maybe. His shoulders and hips felt heavy, his head like a brick, his mind playing static.

Arthur listened to Merlin's steps, heavier than normal. His key fumbled in the lock. Was he drunk? Had he gone to the pub? Was that why he was so late getting back? 

The door opened. Merlin took his time taking off his shoes, throwing his coat over a chair. Stumbling up the stairs and into the bathroom for a piss. Washing his hands, his face. Brushing his teeth. 

It was all so familiar. It should have been comforting, but it made Arthur feel lonelier. It was as if he and Merlin had become ghosts to each other; or maybe it was just Arthur that had dissipated into vapor and desolation. Merlin was still in the apartment, as evidenced by his footsteps, his sighs, the notes scrawled in his diary, the words he pounded into his laptop in the form of emails and tweets and the writing projects he was working on. What physical evidence had Arthur produced on a daily basis? Dirty dishes, piles of laundry. Little to nothing. No words at all. He was haunting their flat. 

Merlin eased the bedroom door open, the hinges creaking. "Arthur?" he said softly. 

Arthur was a ghost. Half asleep. Maybe two-thirds. He didn't want to answer, so he kept his eyes shut and his breathing heavy and even.

Merlin sighed. Arthur listened as he emptied his pockets on the dresser, tossing spare change in the glass jar, plugging in his phone. There was the whispery sound of clothes against skin, the jingle of a belt. Then the bed dipped under Merlin's weight. Arthur felt the warmth of him close, and felt Merlin's breath on his face. It was like the feeling of light, knowing Merlin was looking at him. 

Arthur kept his eyes closed, but couldn't help sigh when he felt Merlin's fingers on his forehead, smoothing back his hair. He could smell the booze-smoke-cologne-oil smell of a pub on Merlin's clothes. His fingers were clammy against Arthur's face. It must have been raining outside. 

"Are you awake?" Merlin asked. 

_No,_ Arthur thought. _I'm already gone._

* * *

Merlin ran his fingers through Arthur's fringe again, pressing up against his back. How long had it been since they'd really touched each other? Had it actually been since Uther had died? That night in their bed, the strange intimacy of it; Merlin hadn't particularly wanted to have sex--he wouldn't have refused it, obviously--all he'd wanted was to be close to Arthur, to have his hands on him and feel him warm and alive. 

And since then? They'd been living in the same flat, sharing the same bed, but the wealth of small affections they shared had suddenly gone. It was like they were constantly a half-step out of line with each other. 

"I miss you," Merlin said softly. He ran a finger down the shell of Arthur's ear. 

In his sleep, Arthur sighed.


	14. The World Ahead

"Oh, god," Merlin said. "You're re-reading Tolkien. Should I hide the sharp objects?" 

Arthur glared at him, regretting that he'd told Merlin that he had relied on the Lord of the Rings as an emotional crutch since puberty. Merlin's faint smile faded. "Sorry," he said. "Not a very good joke." 

"Fairly tasteless, yes," Arthur agreed, going back to _The Two Towers_. He'd lost his place, though, and set it down. He rubbed at his eyes, which were aching. He probably needed glasses, all the straining and squinting at tiny little words all his life. Maybe he could use Uther's reading glasses. They were still in the Kensington flat, in their leather case beside his bed.

Arthur suppressed a shudder. No, that was a step over the line. 

"Are you all right?" Merlin asked, sitting down next to him on the couch. 

"Fine." 

"Arthur," Merlin said. 

"What?" Arthur snapped. He was sick to death of the way Merlin had been hovering over him since Uther died, as if waiting for Arthur to break down and start bawling like a child. 

After a moment, Merlin asked, "Should I make us some tea?" 

"If you like," Arthur said. Merlin gazed at him a moment longer, then got up, brushing his hand across Arthur's shoulders as he went. Arthur picked up his book again, turning the pages listlessly. When he'd picked up _Fellowship of the Ring_ as a young teenager, the story had enthralled him. At thirteen, already feeling as if his future were a weight that hung around his neck, he'd fallen completely into the story. He'd traveled the entire way from the Shire to Mordor in his mind, had felt hopelessness and triumph and despair and relief. 

He'd been trying to recapture that feeling, or any feeling that wasn't the pervasive loneliness or irritation. But he couldn't really summon up any sympathy for the characters. Frodo was a whinger and Sam was a too-loyal idiot and Aragorn was boringly predictable. It all struck him as overwrought. Everything did, though, including his own thoughts.

"Let's go for a walk," Merlin said, hovering in the doorway.

"Maybe later," Arthur said. 

"Come on. It's lovely out." 

Arthur looked outside. The sun was shining, for the first time in weeks. It had been a rainy spring. His father's funeral had had to be conducted underneath a tent, and the room at the wake had been damp from everyone's clothes. 

"Please?" Merlin said. "We don't have to go far."

Arthur looked at Merlin, who was standing by the window. He looked hopeful, like a dog already holding its leash in its mouth. 

That was a horrid image. Arthur couldn't even make appropriate metaphors anymore, not even in his own head. 

"What happened to making tea?" he asked. 

"You weren't that enthused about the tea anyway." Merlin pointed out. "Besides, ee can have tea when we come back. Or get a cup at a cafe and take it with us."

"You go if you want," Arthur said. "I've got..." 

"What?" Merlin snapped. "Work to do?" He gestured at Arthur, who was still in his pajamas. 

Arthur sighed, annoyed with Merlin, with himself, with the entire bloody world for not just leaving him alone. "No need to rub it in." 

Merlin rolled his eyes. "I'm not rubbing it in. I'm saying you're not doing anything that can't wait for half an hour while we go outside and enjoy the sunshine." 

"And I'm saying if you really want to go outside, the door is right there. You don't need to drag me with you."

Merlin said nothing, merely gave him one of those looks that communicated how prattish he thought Arthur was being. And he was being a prat, Arthur knew. He also didn't really feel like going to the effort of getting dressed just to parade around like Mrs. Dalloway buying her flowers.

But Merlin was still looking at him, and Arthur wasn't really in the mood for another row. They'd been having more than enough lately. Arthur knew they were probably his fault; he was already a morose asshole with a selfish streak, and had been acting like every stereotype of the modern novelist since his father died. At least he hadn't been drinking, though, or writing idiotic letters to the Guardian about the state of literature. Not that he _could_ write. 

"Fine," Arthur said, shoving away from the table. "I'll put on some bloody trousers and we can go for our morning constitutional." 

"Yes, it's such a burden, I know," Merlin said.

Arthur just managed to stop from stomping up the stairs like the petulant child he knew he was being. He didn't even bother changing out of the manky t-shirt he was wearing, just yanked on the first pair of jeans he saw and pulled on some socks. He grabbed his wallet, keys, and phone from the bedside table, then thundered back downstairs. 

"We're stopping at the offie to buy cigarettes," he announced, shoving his feet into his trainers. "And if you give me shit about smoking, I'm turning right around."

"I'll leave that to Morgana," Merlin said, winding one of his scarves around his neck. "Since you actually listen to her pestering."

They left the house in a stony silence, and walked like two strangers who happened to be going to the same way, with enough space between them to accommodate their respective angers. Why the fuck had he agreed to go on this stupid walk again? Well, there were cigarettes at the end of it, at least. The whole thing was so _stupid_ , Arthur thought. And embarrassing. They were two grown men, for fuck's sake. Merlin's mothering was making him emotionally regress into teenage boy territory--or maybe it was the other way around. Not that it really mattered, the results were the same. 

They were about halfway to the offie before Merlin said, "Sorry." 

"For what?" Arthur scoffed. 

"Please don't," Merlin said, voice soft, barely audible over traffic. 

Arthur sighed. He could feel the anger--not exactly leave him. It felt like instead of swirling around in his chest, it congealed, sinking somewhere beneath his stomach. Making him heavier.

"I just thought-- It's a nice day. Feels like the first real day of spring," Merlin said. "We've been cooped up in the flat so long."

The anger in Arthur's stomach felt sour, turning into guilt. He slung his arm over Merlin's shoulders, feeling ungainly as he did so. How had it been so easy, before? It was as if he'd forgotten how to physically be near Merlin, how to fit himself into the spaces that Merlin opened up for him. 

It was a nice day, Arthur thought. There was sunlight and grass struggling up through the mud and a few determined daffodils. There were people walking, cars, bicyclists. A few clouds in the sky, fat and fluffy. Everything moving in concert with each other, complicated, intricate. He thought again of Mrs. Dalloway, deciding to buy the flowers herself, and seeing the entire world and all of history in the walk down Bond Street, wallowing in sentimentality and indulging in endless flights of fancy. Memories colliding with fantasy, chance encounters opening up entirely new worlds.

Once, he thought, he'd have been enthralled by this sight: London going about its busy, one of the most beautiful and diverse cities in the world humming, alive, organic, chaotic, a hive of small intersecting stories. He'd always loved London, had yearned for it the entire time he'd been in Devon and then Oxford, longed for it whenever he was on tour or a lecture circuit. Now? It made him tired. 

"Sorry I'm a surly bastard," Arthur said. 

Merlin put his arm around Arthur's waist. "You're not a surly bastard. You're just going through a rough patch. It'll get better." 

"That's... unusually diplomatic of you," Arthur said. 

"It will, though," Merlin said. "Nobody's expecting you to go along as if nothing happened, Arthur. Your father died and you're grieving. I mean, I wish you'd-- No, never mind." 

"What?" Arthur said.

"Forget it, it's stupid," Merlin said. 

"Merlin, would you just bloody tell me?" 

"I just--I wish you'd talk to me. Or Morgana, or Gwaine, or anyone. A therapist, even."

"You didn't see a therapist," Arthur said. "When Balinor died." 

"I barely knew him," Merlin argued. "And anyway, this isn't about me." 

"No, it's about me and how I'm not coping correctly," Arthur said. He tried to pull away, but Merlin grabbed hold and turned him until they were facing each other.

"Don't put words in my mouth," Merlin snapped. "It's not about correctness or any of that." 

"Then what?" Arthur said. "What the hell do you want from me?" 

Merlin sighed, and squeezed Arthur's arms through his jacket. "I hate seeing you like this," he said. "I hate feeling like I'm shut out."

Arthur felt his anger rise up and then dissipate again. After all, it was a perfectly reasonable request, wasn't it? Not to bottle everything up and then let it leak out in nasty comments and toxic moods? But even considering it made Arthur want to flee to a remote island or a cottage on a moor somewhere. This was his grief, his pain, his own. It was his father who had died, and Arthur's wouldn't--couldn't--ask anyone else to feel this for him.

Merlin had asked Arthur once, what it was that he loved so much about London. Arthur could have come up with a thousand tiny answers: the parks in the autumn, the bridges, the way it smelled during a spring rain, the pubs, how it was both polite and vulgar all at once. All of it was just a roundabout way of saying: it was his home. 

Can a place still be home if you no longer feel comfortable in its boundaries? If it feels like it's closing in around you? Uther had been a somewhat awful father, but he was still the only parent Arthur ever knew. And now he was everywhere, on every street of London and every dark corner of Arthur's mind. 

"Are you all right?" Merlin said. Arthur realized that he'd unconsciously been leaning into the other man. 

"Fine," Arthur said, shifting his weight back onto his own feet. 

"Did you want to buy cigarettes?" Merlin said.

He hadn't even noticed they were at the offie. 

"Yeah," he said. He took his arm away from Merlin, and immediately felt cold all along his side. He bought a pack of Dunhills and, as an afterthought, a Cadbury's Fruit and Nut for Merlin. While paying for them, he realized suddenly how shabby he looked and felt; old pair of trainers, jeans that had been lying on the floor, a t-shirt that smelled a bit musty, an old coat and a beanie. He looked like--like an artist who was down on his luck, ready for some Twilight Zone-level plot twist or reversal of fortune. Or maybe he was the "after" from a set of before and after pictures. 

"All right?" the shopkeep said, and Arthur realized that he'd just sighed in disgust at himself. 

"Fine, thanks," Arthur said, accepting his change and getting the hell out. 

Outside, Merlin had his face tilted up towards the sunlight, eyes closed. His eyelashes lay against his cheek, and he had a solemn look on his face. Arthur knew, though, that if he asked Merlin what he was thinking about, he'd reply with something like, _this terrifying book I read about cephalopods,_ or _did you ever wonder what would happen if children grew on trees?_

Except sometimes he would say something that made Arthur's heart stutter, like, _I'm thinking about my first time going camping alone, how lonely it was, but the loneliness made the night come alive, and it felt like the wind was singing and the stars were whispering to me._ And Arthur would smile and make fun of his poetic streak and Merlin would sniff and say that Arthur had all the romance of a dead horse, then admit that yes, the ball of hashish he'd smoked before bed might have had something to do with the singing wind. 

Arthur closed the distance between them, unable to keep away a moment longer, and went to kiss Merlin on the cheek. But Merlin, startled out of whatever reverie he'd been caught in, jerked back when Arthur drew near. 

"God, sorry," he said. "I didn't realize that was you. Thought I was about to get mugged." 

Arthur managed to smile, despite the fact that--for some stupid, inane, reason--the words broke his heart a little. He fumbled a cigarette and shrugged, tried to think of some witty reply. He couldn't. 

"Park?" he said instead. 

Merlin looked at him, the serenity on his face gone. He looked troubled now, as if he knew what Arthur was feeling. "All right?" he asked. 

"I really wish people would stop asking me that," was all Arthur could say.

* * *

One of the best parts about writing, Arthur believed, was when he figured everything out. 

Inevitably, he would run against a wall in a novel, paint himself into a corner: the orphan was stranded up in the old fir tree, watching snowflakes gently fall around him, or the traveler from the future would be sitting in a coffee shop, blood seeping out from the wound on his thigh. Where were they to go? What would happen next? There were pitfalls in the course of a writing a novel that Arthur couldn't steer away from in time. 

Sometimes it would only take a few minutes to work through. He'd lean his chair back and close his eyes, or go down to the kitchen and drink a cup of tea. Sometimes it would take days, or weeks. But the answer always came to him, sneaking up on him and pouncing. Arthur never knew quite how to describe it--the image of light bulb suddenly flickering on, though apt, was rather cliche--but every writer or artist he knew understood the feeling, the revelation, what was opaque and hidden suddenly becoming clear. 

It didn't quite feel like that, making the decision to leave London. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt the joy of revelation, like he had received a gift of an idea. Instead, like everything these days, the decision felt distant, almost like it was outside of him. He would own it, he'd accept all the responsibility and consequences, but it also felt like the only thing to do. London was no longer home: he'd leave it. He could no longer write: he'd be useful some other way. He was dragging Merlin into a depression with him: Merlin deserved better than that. 

If it wasn't the kind of brilliant inspiration that used to make his blood hum, though, it was a relief. After more than a month of wandering through a morass of listlessness and doubt, here was something clear. It was terrible, he knew that, but in the end, action was always better than inaction. If Uther had taught him one thing, that was it.

* * *

From: wart@arthurpendragon.com  
To: gwaine.lacroix@lionsgate.co.uk  
CC: morganalefay@gmail.co.uk  
SUBJ: RE: Producer position on BOY OUTSIDE adaptation  
22/04/14

Gwaine,  
Let's just skip the part where you give me a richly-deserved arse-kicking for not replying to you before now. You know what's been going on. Presumably, you understand that it's been a shitty month and I haven't been in a good position to make any artistic or professional decisions. 

Honestly, I'm still not. So that's probably why I've decided to do it. Have your people call Morgana, she'll get the paperwork drawn up and details hammered out. I know the schedule is tight, and that you'll need me out there soon. The earliest I can probably be out there is two weeks.

Best,  
Arthur

* * *

Arthur considered turning his phone off, but knew that would likely just make Morgana show up in person, or worse, incite her to call Merlin. He hadn't seen her since he'd stormed out into the rain at the Kensington flat, hadn't returned her calls or increasingly irritated emails. He wasn't precisely looking forward to this conversation either, but even if he didn't have a legal obligation to involve her in this process, he needed Morgana in his corner. 

So when the phone rang, Arthur gathered the threadbare scraps of his courage and led with, "I swear, this will be the last of my bullshit you put up with." 

"What the _fuck_ , Arthur?" she cried. 

He winced. "I'm sorry." 

"You're sorry? You're sorry? You're going to drop this in my lap after refusing to speak to me, you had better be bloody sorry! I'm your sister, you ass, not to mention your bloody manager." 

"Morgana--" he tried to say. 

"Shut. Up. Arthur. Did it completely escape your mind that I've been a mess myself? He was my father too, your grief doesn't eclipse mine or give you the right to cut me off for a whole month until you deign to _carbon copy_ me on a _business email_ that basically means a metric fuckton of work for me when you _know_ I'm trying to get this new press together with Gwen, not that you've been a single bit of help, and... God, I wish I was there so I could punch you in the face, you brat. Screaming at you over a mobile just isn't enough." 

"If you really need a punching bag, Morgana, god knows I deserve it," he said. "But I need you to do this for me." 

"Christ, Arthur, why?" 

Arthur tried to think of an answer, but honestly couldn't. He just sat there in his and Merlin's bedroom, staring at the picture of the two of them that was on the dresser. It wasn't framed or anything, it wasn't that nice of a picture, really. It had been at some literary function, utterly boring, but a nice excuse to get Merlin to dress in something besides skinny jeans and old man sweaters. In the photo, Merlin was leaning close in to Arthur's ear, one hand on his shoulder, fingers grazing the nape of his neck, probably to say some disparaging remark about the literary elite. Arthur was smirking, eyes somewhere else, but his attention obviously on Merlin. 

Arthur wondered, looking at that picture, how gay couples like he and Merlin would have managed a century ago, juggling their work with a torrid love affair with having to be closeted. It was so obvious in that photo, the way that they loved each other. 

And Arthur could only barely remember how it felt. 

"Has it been that bad?" Morgana asked softly. 

"Worse," Arthur said, because he couldn't even summon up the wherewithal to lie anymore. "I need to get out of here." 

"Oh, Arthur," she sighed. "What's Merlin got to say about this?" 

Arthur held his breath. "I haven't told him yet." 

Dead silence on the other line. 

"You can say it," Arthur said. 

"Say what?" Morgana said, and he'd never heard her sound this way: quiet, devastated. He was used to her disappointment and needling, but this was a new level of awfulness. 

"Whatever you want to say," he said. "It can't be worse than what I've said to myself in the last month." 

"Oh, you _idiot,_ Arthur. You..." 

He waited for her to continue with the name-calling, but she just sighed instead. 

"You'll do it?" he asked. 

"I will. But what are you going to tell Merlin?"

"I'll figure something out," Arthur said, uncomfortably aware of the omission in this conversation. Morgana assumed that Merlin would be accompanying him. Arthur didn't want to disabuse her of the notion in case she'd try to talk him out of it. 

"Are you sure about this?" Morgana asked. 

What could he say? _I'm sure this is a mistake and I'm sure I'll regret this but anything is better than this feeling, that I'm dying by inches and taking the most important person in my life down with me._

Merlin had already saved him from despair once, when they first met, when Arthur was sure he was used up and burnt out at thirty-two years old. Arthur couldn't ask that of him again. 

"I'm sure," Arthur said.


	15. Unbelievable Happiness

From: wart@arthurpendragon.com  
To: yourownpersonalmerlin@merlinemrys.com  
SUBJ: RE: bloody sandflies  
23/03/2013

Sorry in advance for the short email. Morgana's been on a rampage, trying to get press for the Sunday Times prize nomination. I'm up against Junot bloody Diaz, I'm as likely to be struck by a rogue meteor as win against him. I've been on the run from one interview to the next for the last three days and now have to meet Uther for dinner. (I know, Merlin, definition of insanity, etc., but he's still my father and it's my filial duty to at least try to have a relationship with him.) 

I've scheduled a meeting with an estate agency for when you get back. Part of me cannot believe that we have made a major decision about our relationship over email. At least it wasn't Facebook. I'm leaving it to you to make the announcement on Twitter, I don't think I'd be able to stand watching my mentions fill up with exclamation points and emojis. 

Bloody hell, I just read over that paragraph and realized how ungrateful I sound. Let me try this again. 

Merlin, you make me unbelievably happy. 

(It took me fifteen minutes to type those five words. Stupid, isn't it? Are you sure you want to commit to living with such a prat?) 

It's true, though. You know how some people think they're going to die young? I know you always said you never believed you'd see thirty. I always believed that I'd die alone, middle-aged and suffering from liver cirrhosis, a half-finished manuscript clutched in my cold, dead hand. I always thought I'd die unloved and unlovable, if widely admired and with a shelf full of prestigious writing awards.

And then you talked shit about Dickens, and I got you drunk on subpar Scotch, and we fell in love like it was the easiest thing in the world. You are on the other side of the world right now, but I can perfectly imagine how it would feel to have you sitting beside me in my living room. Is it creepy to say that I have memorized the way that you breathe when you're doing nothing in particular? When we're not eating or arguing or having sex, I mean, when we're just quietly existing in the same room. I can imagine it perfectly, the way your diaphragm pulls the air into your lungs, the slight pause, the drawn out exhale. I know exactly how it sounds. 

These are the days of miracles and wonders, like that song you made me listen to. And I know it's just a shared flat, but it's more than I've ever had with another person, and it exceeds the boundaries of what I'd hoped for in my life. 

Now, I have to stop thinking about all the, yes, tremendous sex we will be having when you return next week, and go meet my father for dinner. Should I share the happy news, you think? Would it be worth the inevitable heart attack he'll have?

* * *

TO: yourownpersonalmerlin@merlinemrys.com  
FROM: wart@arthurpendragon.com  
SUBJ: RE: RE: bloody sandflies  
23/03/2012

I did it, I told him we were getting a flat. He actually managed to choke out a "congratulations" without immediately perishing of mortification. He then changed the subject to rugby and doggedly kept at it through all four courses. It was excruciating and I exalted in every moment of it. 

This will be brilliant. We're going to be brilliant.

I love you. 

-A


	16. Half My Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for heartbreak and break-ups, and brief mentions of suicidal feelings.

"I'm sorry, _Vancouver?_ " Merlin said, not entirely sure he'd heard Arthur right. "As in _Canada?_ "

"Yes," Arthur said simply. "As in Canada. They want me out there as soon as possible." 

Merlin took a breath, trying to process this: Arthur haring off to bloody Canada in order to help produce the film adaptation of _Boy Outside_ , no previous warning or discussion with his bloody partner apparently necessary. He clamped down on the anger and the litany of you fucking self-centered arsehole and asked, through a clenched jaw, "For how long?" 

"Pre-production has already started," Arthur said, still in that infuriatingly calm voice. "That'll be another month and a half. They're estimating a thirty-day shoot, and then about five months of post-production. Editing and marketing and all that. They won't need me for all of that." 

"So that's, what, three months? Four? Give me a number here, Arthur." 

"Probably four." 

Merlin looked at Arthur, dead in the eye, and said. "Let me see if I understand this: You want to--no, have _already decided_ , to go to Vancouver, in Canada, in _bloody North America,_ for four months. Starting, when? Tomorrow?" 

"Two weeks." 

"Two weeks," Merlin repeated. Then, "Are you _fucking kidding me?_ "

"Merlin--" 

"You're joking. You must be joking. Arthur, you can barely stand to go down to Cardiff for the weekend to visit my mum, and you want to leave London for four months?" 

Arthur just stood there, not denying any of it, looking down at his feet as if Merlin's anger just made him too tired to stand straight. Merlin was struck by that odd, sideways emotion again, that he was looking at Arthur--the love of his goddam life--and seeing a complete stranger inhabit his body. It was the most unsettling aspect of the past few months, that Merlin had to grieve for the loss of the man he'd known and come to terms with this interloper. Maybe it was why he kept needling at Arthur, picking at him. It was awful, but he couldn't stop it; he was looking for clues as to where the man he loved had gone, and more importantly, when he'd come back. 

"I thought you liked Vancouver," Arthur said quietly. "You told me that once."

"I went there for three days, for a con, _six years ago_. It's a nice place to spend a bank holiday, doesn't mean I want to pack my bloody life up and move there." 

"You--" Arthur said, then hesitated. "You don't have to come with me." 

"Oh, how magnanimous of you, you twat," Merlin said, flinging himself down on the couch. 

"Maybe it's better if you don't," Arthur said. His tone was subdued and sad, not angry, but it rang in the quiet room like a scream. Merlin felt like he'd been doused in ice. For all that he'd been enraged by Arthur's sudden announcement, it hadn't entered his mind that Arthur meant to leave him. He was suddenly glad he had sat down in a huff; he was pretty sure all the feeling had gone out of his legs.

"Just to be clear," Merlin said, trying not to let his voice shake. "You want to move to the other side of the world for four months. Without me."

"I'm not good for you, Merlin," Arthur said in a rush, and it took Merlin's breath away, the loathing in his voice. "I'm not good for anyone or anything right now, I can't write or edit or, or even do the bloody dishes. I don't know how you put up with me, I can't even stand myself. And I feel like I'm ruining the only good thing in my life by--"

"By what? Being with me?" Merlin asked. He could feel tears starting up behind his eyes, and no, damn it, he wasn't going to dissolve into a shivering crying mess, he _had_ to get these words out. "Arthur, I love you. I have loved you for the last two years, ever since you got me drunk in an hotel near Heathrow and told me I had horrible opinions about everything, but was still attractive despite that." 

"Merlin," Arthur started to say, but Merlin raised his hand, cutting him off.

"I love you," Merlin repeated. "There aren't conditions on it, like I'll only love you if you're not depressed, or as long as you're a successful novelist. I love you. Period. There's no fine print." 

"I love you too," Arthur said. 

_"Then why are you breaking up with me?"_ Merlin shouted, and that was it, the tears were coming, there was nothing he could do to stop them now. He'd always been an easy crier, especially after he'd gotten sober, with nothing to blunt the edge of his own emotions. Arthur had never quite known how to handle it, and Merlin could see the alarm and echo of his own heartbreak creeping onto his face. Merlin thought, for a moment, that maybe he could get Arthur to take it all back, everything he'd said about Vancouver and the film and leaving him behind. 

"Please, don't," Arthur said instead, not conciliatory at all, only weary. 

"Oh, fuck you," Merlin said, then shoved past him and up the stairs, stumbling blindly into the bathroom. He slammed the door behind him and sank onto the floor, dissolving into sobs, hating his own weakness, hating that he needed Arthur so much that the thought of him leaving made Merlin feel physically ill, guts cramping and bile flooding his throat. 

Control, he had to get control of himself. He tried to do the breathing exercises he'd learned from the various therapists that he'd seen: slow inhalation through the nose, and exhale through the mouth. Of course, he was completely congested from crying, so it made fuck all difference, Arthur was going to leave him regardless. 

Merlin sank down, still coughing out sobs, until he was crouched on his heels, eyes level with the roll of loo paper. It was that squishy stuff that Arthur favored, that made it feel like you were wiping your bum with a fleece blanket. Merlin hated it, but Arthur had kept buying the stuff in bulk. It had become a running joke between them, Arthur's fragile flower of an arse.

Then Merlin realized he was getting sentimental about toilet tissue, and furiously hated himself for a moment. This was one of the problems of being a writer. You couldn't just feel like shit; you had to give dimensions to the shit, note the shit's qualities down in excruciating detail. After all, suffering made great creative fodder. 

Merlin should have just been a plumber. The pay was undoubtedly better. 

There was a soft knock on the other side of the door. "Merlin?" 

"Jesus, fuck _off_ ," Merlin spat, trying to control his hiccoughing sobs. "Fuck off to fucking Canada already." 

There was a pause. "Is that what you want? Should I leave sooner?"

Merlin growled in frustration. "You are the stupidest git in the entire world."

"I know," Arthur said. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck you, _your sorry_ ," Merlin spat. "You're still dumping me because your asshole father died and it's sent you into a bloody depression." 

"It's not that simple."

"Oh, it's not?" Merlin shouted. "Do tell me how it's so complicated then." 

Silence on the other side of the door. 

"That's what I thought," Merlin said. He wiped at his eyes. "If you weren't such a bloody coward, you'd just admit that you need therapy, get some antidepressants, and move on with your fucking life." 

Merlin knew he was being cruel, but couldn't quite bring himself to stop. He'd tried being patient with Arthur-- it had been two bloody months of tiptoeing around his explosive moods and acid sadness. He'd tried to be kind and understanding, tried to just be present, to let Arthur know that he wasn't alone in his grief. Well, fuck that. Their relationship had always had a combative edge to it. They'd never gotten anywhere by being nice to each other. 

He tore open the door, ready to rip Arthur a new one, but his momentum stuttered when he saw Arthur sitting, slumped against the wall, face in his hands. Was he crying, Merlin wondered? He felt oddly terrified and thrilled by the thought. He'd never seen Arthur cry, because Arthur was a repressed git with daddy issues who exorcised all his demons into his writing. 

"Arthur," Merlin said, but couldn't think of anything to say. 

"You're probably right," Arthur said, voice muffled and rough as sand. "But all I can think about is the therapist that my father sent me to when I was a teenager because my uncle hounded him into it."

"Christ," Merlin said. That therapist had told Uther that Arthur fancied one of his rugby mates and then prescribed an anti-depressant that made Arthur gain weight. Arthur had distrusted therapists ever since, and was ridiculously meticulous about staying in shape when not on tour. Or had been, until two months ago. 

"They're not all awful," Merlin reminded him. 

"I can't, Merlin. It's not in me." 

"But it's in you to throw away our relationship," Merlin said. "Two years, out the window because you have hangups about therapy."

Arthur shuddered, and it wasn't quite empathy made Merlin kneel down and pull Arthur's hands from his face. Merlin didn't know if he wanted to alleviate Arthur's suffering, but he wanted to see it, to be sure it was real, to be sure he was feeling _something_ if he was going to walk away. 

Arthur's face was a wreck, streaked with tears. His skin blotchy and red, a week's worth of stubble, lips chapped and bitten. He looked like he was in hell. 

Merlin realized that Arthur--for all he'd been obviously depressed and anxious and an arsehole since his father died--had been making an effort to hide the worst of it from Merlin.

"I don't know what else to do," Arthur rasped. "I know I'm a piece of shit for leaving, but I can't stay in London. There's just too much of him. Uther. It's like every day is his bloody funeral, all over again." 

Arthur's voice--rough and low, the words clawed sharp from his chest--set Merlin's tears off again, and he really hated his tear-ducts then. Crying was such a self-serving defense against the world. Merlin slid down the wall opposite him, so they were both sitting on the floor, Arthur's hands still folded in his. 

"It's grief, Arthur," he said. "Trust me, if there's one thing I know, it's grief. And it goes away." 

"When? How long does it take?" Arthur's eyes bored into him. Merlin remembered Will's death, when they were both seventeen--the first of his friends to die, but not the last. Merlin had fallen straight into the widening gyre of drug use after that, and hadn't emerged for years. 

"You know there's no answer to that," Merlin said. 

"Exactly," Arthur said. He scrubbed at his eyes. "I can't stay here and hope I stop feeling like this. I'll end up pulling a Virginia Woolf and wind up at the bottom of the Thames." 

Merlin squeezed Arthur's hand in alarm. Arthur had always joked offhandedly about suicide, but--

"I'll go to Vancouver," Merlin said hollowly. "If you want me there with you." 

But Arthur shook his head. "I think... I think I need to be alone. It just seems right. Working on the film of the novel I wrote for and about Uther, I feel like it'll either help me or just actually drive me to suicide."

"For fuck's sake, Arthur, don't say that if you don't mean it," Merlin muttered. When Arthur was silent, he clenched Arthur's hand, panicky-tight, in his. "Arthur, if you ever--"

"I don't--" 

"If the thought even crosses your mind, you _call me._ Or Morgana, or a bloody hotline, I don't care who." 

"Merlin--" 

"Promise me," Merlin hissed. "You fucking promise me."

"I promise," Arthur said. 

Merlin took a shaky breath and nodded, wiping at his eyes, which were still leaking tears. He trusted Arthur's promise. He had to. "So, what now? Is that it? Are we over?" 

"I don't know," Arthur said. "I still love you, I just can't-- What do people normally do in these circumstances?"

"I don't think there are 'normal circumstances,'" Merlin said. He always forgot that Arthur had never been in a relationship for longer than six months. "Maybe you should just... go to Vancouver. And in two or three months, I'll come visit." 

Arthur took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All right. Two or three months. And we'll re-evaluate." 

Merlin nodded. He felt exhausted, as wrung out as an old washcloth. He wanted nothing more than to sleep. He looked at Arthur--still the love of his goddam life, still his best friend, even if he'd just torn Merlin's heart from his bloody chest--and wanted nothing more than to curl up with him in their bed and sleep. There was so much to do and discuss: whether Arthur would stay on the flat's lease, what to do with their commingled stuff, how to tell their friends, if they should tell their fans. Merlin couldn't think about any of it. 

"Can we--could we just lie down for a little while?" Merlin asked, feeling so damn pathetic, but too tired to care anymore. 

Arthur nodded, and they helped each other up, making their way to their room like old men with bent spines, cautious and pained. And when Arthur carefully put his hand on Merlin's shoulder, stroking down his arm, Merlin couldn't help but wonder how he'd live without this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?_  
>  He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.  
> I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,  
> And went with half my life about my ways.
> 
>  
> 
> A. E. Houseman


	17. Death and the Young Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unpublished short story by Merlin Emrys.
> 
> Filed under WORDS > SHORT > UNPUB > PRIVATE > EXORCISING DEMONS > fuck it all

The young man caught up with Death at the bus terminal. Death sat on one of the benches, gloves lain beside his thigh, sipping from a coffee cup. 

"There you are," the young man said. "I've been looking for you everywhere." 

"Have you?" asked Death, curious. Not many people truly sought him out like this. 

"Of course. Didn't you hear me calling?"

"Sorry," Death said. "I've been rather busy."

"I must have rung you dozens of times. You could have at least texted." 

"I apologize, truly. What was it you needed?" 

"What do you _think_ I need?" the young man said, exasperated. 

Death tilted his head. The young man, as far as he could see, needed many things: a haircut, a cleaner shirt, a few decent meals, a vacation, a confession booth, a romantic tryst, a therapist. Young men needed so many things. This young man seemed to need even more than his fellows. 

"I need to die. My life is too painful to continue. My heart's been smashed to smithereens, my lungs breathe only the bitterest air, my eyes burn with constant tears." 

It was a rather overwrought speech, Death thought, but kept his judgment to himself. 

"I've met people in more pain than you," Death said. "Not to belittle your suffering, but I've met women who've had their souls torn from their chests. I've seen men crawl, blind and bleeding, towards their families, trying to protect them even as their life's blood poured out of them. I've watched cancer steal away a person's life, one centimeter at a time. And none of them ever chased me down to a bus station." 

"He left me," the young man said. "He left me and he's not the first to leave me, I've watched my friends die and I've thrown my father's ashes into the wind and I've buried pieces of myself and I've done the bloody twelve steps and I've exorcised my demons and I've tried to keep a careful rein on my idiotically reckless heart but it just insists on loving all these people who leave me, whether it's to Canada or fatal car crashes or cancer. And I don't want to do it anymore. And I know it's stupid and overwrought and emo and whatever other way you want to classify it, but I'm going to lose my bloody shit if it happens again. All I can think is how much easier it was when I was constantly popping pills or dosing ecstasy or smoking hash and not having to deal with all this goddamn heartache. How am I supposed to live like this? How do I live when my life's been torn in half?" 

Death, because he's a capricious arsehole with no mercy, said simply, "I can't tell you how to live." 

And Death picked up his gloves and left the young man there, depositing his empty coffee cup in a bin on the way.

"Fuck," the young man said. 

Fuck it all.


	18. Love Is Like the Lion's Tooth

In the end, it was depressingly simple to leave behind an entire relationship. He packed a bag, emailed a couple people to let them know his plans, and bought a train ticket. 

To be fair, though, Arthur had done the hard part for him. 

"I just... I thought we'd have some more time," Arthur said, when he found Merlin packing in their bedroom. Was it still their bedroom if neither of them were sleeping in it? Merlin had taken to sleeping in the couch in his office. He didn't know where Arthur slept, and told himself that he didn't care. 

Two days of living together after they'd broken up--sort of broken up, decided to separate, fucking whatever--was enough to make Merlin decide that waiting around to be left behind was both pointless and miserable. It was like attending your own funeral. 

"Time for what?" Merlin asked. He grabbed a handful of t-shirts from the dresser and tossed them into the suitcase. "What did you expect?"

"I don't know. I think I expected more of a fight." Arthur looked into the suitcase like it would have a better answer. 

Merlin answered, "I'm done fighting. It's over, right?"

Arthur sat on the bed. "For a few months. And then--"

"We'll re-evaluate," Merlin finished, letting some scorn into his voice. "Sure."

Arthur let Merlin pack in silence for a few minutes, then asked. "Where will you go?" 

"Cardiff. Home." Merlin felt meanly glad to see Arthur flinch from his choice of words. 

"Does your mum know?" Arthur asked in a subdued tone. "About us?" 

"Sent her an email this morning." He hadn't checked his email since, and he'd kept his phone on silent. He was pretty sure that talking to his mum would only make him a crying, weeping mess all over again. He couldn't do that, not here, and not around Arthur. Not since, in the midst of Merlin's tears, he'd said, "Please don't." Two words, devoid of sympathy, or any real feeling at all. It had replayed in Merlin's mind like a skipping record, the flat tone and tired expression. Merlin wouldn't put either of them through that again. 

He glanced over at Arthur, and was surprised to see that he looked quietly devastated. Of course, he and Hunith had become close in the years they'd been dating. Merlin's mum was always one to take anyone under her wing, and Arthur was chivalrous, dressed smartly, had no trouble keeping up with Merlin intellectually, and had never had a mother. Arthur genuinely loved her, and she'd been ecstatic when Merlin had told her how happy Arthur made him. 

Had made him. 

"Are you sadder over losing my mum than leaving me?" said Merlin. 

"Of course not," Arthur said, but his voice was gruff. 

"I need to pack," Merlin said. "Excuse me."

* * *

_More of an orphan than ever,_ Arthur wrote in his notebook. Upstairs, Merlin thumped around their bedroom, opening and shutting drawers. The flat seemed silent otherwise--there was no music coming from the stereo, the television was off, and the windows were shut, muting the noise from outside. It made the place feel like a tomb.

The fact that Arthur would be the one watching Merlin's train pull away, rather than the other way around, bothered him. Before, his move to Vancouver had seemed... not noble, but a necessary sacrifice. Which he supposed had a sort of nobility to it. It seemed like an empty gesture now.

Merlin's question--over which loss Arthur would mourn more, Merlin or his mum--continued to sting. It hurt him that Merlin would even consider it. Christ, he already missed Merlin, and had a feeling this would become acute when he was really gone. But it did have an uncomfortable ring of truth. 

He'd managed to forget that this would impact the rest of the people in his life, to whom he'd given little thought. Hunith had sent him a nice letter after his father died, which he'd scanned but not really seen, as it were. He dug it out now of one of the many piles of paper he'd left around the flat. 

_I know you and your father had some troubles. Merlin's told me as much--maybe more than he should have, but only because he's rather protective of those he loves. Anyways, I hope you know that you always have a place with us in our family. It's not the same but I hope it's some comfort._

Yet another bridge burned. Arthur folded the letter and placed it back in the pile, wondering how Hunith was reacting to the news, and how his other friends would. 

Gwaine would probably thump him when he found out that Arthur had--sort of, mostly--left Merlin. Morgana would probably do her best to blacklist him from all the other literary agencies in the UK. He'd cut off most of his other friends over the past few months, or they'd been giving him space to grieve. He hadn't told any of them that he would be leaving town yet. What would they say when they found out? 

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Arthur wondered what the hell he was doing.

* * *

Arthur insisted on accompanying him to the station. Merlin wasn't sure how to feel about it; saying goodbye at the flat and getting into a cab would have been disappointingly anticlimactic. But doing it at the train station seemed dangerous. There was just too much precedent. How many movies involved poignant goodbyes at train stations? There was too much potential for melodrama.

Merlin, because his imagination was his best asset and his worst enemy, pictured all of the many scenarios in his head as they rode to Paddington. Arthur standing like a stone as Merlin wept and clung to him and begged him to change his mind. Merlin walking off with a barbed comment and a swing in his step. Arthur chasing after the train. Merlin canceling his ticket. Both of them shaking hands, tipping their hats, and walking away like polite but distant acquaintances. 

But when they got there, and found the track for Merlin's train, just as Merlin turned and tried to say, "I suppose I'll see you in a few months," Arthur seized him by the shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. Merlin dropped his bag on the ground and did the same, before he could even process what was happening. Holding Arthur, it seemed, was just an automatic gesture, as much as breathing or blinking. 

Christ, it felt good. It was bloody awful, how good and right and familiar it felt. 

Merlin buried his face in Arthur's shoulder, trying to memorize everything about the moment: the feeling of Arthur's shirt against his face, the faint vibration of Arthur's heartbeat, the smell of soap and laundry detergent and his skin. Arthur shifted, and Merlin's heart went into his throat, thinking for a moment that Arthur meant to pull away. But instead, he just put his hands--and Arthur had wonderful hands, strong and masculine and lovely--on either side of Merlin's face, tilting it back. And Arthur kissed him. 

Forceful and overwhelming, it was everything their kisses hadn't been for the last couple months. It shocked Merlin, and it thrilled him, and it broke his heart all over again. _I remember you_ , he thought, as he opened himself to the kiss, slid his tongue against Arthur's. _I remember this._

When the kiss ended, he turned his face towards Arthur's palm and laid a kiss in its center, just against Arthur's heart line. When he looked up, Arthur looked shocked, like he'd just been roughly woken up from a deep sleep, and a little turned on. His mouth hung open a little, and he was breathing through his mouth, lips red and still slick from the kiss.

 _Take it all back,_ Merlin thought. _Tell me to stay._

But as the moment spun out, he knew that Arthur wouldn't. And Merlin wouldn't beg again, couldn't stand the thought of hearing Arthur turn him down again with a voice that was flat and weary. 

So he turned Arthur's hand over, kissed the knuckles, and--becausethe word _goodbye_ stumbled and tripped as he tried to force it from his throat--said, "I'll see you when I see you." 

Arthur swiped his finger across Merlin's cheekbone, and stepped away. Merlin waited for him to say something, anything. But Arthur didn't seem able to speak. Merlin picked up his bag and walked away, onto the platform and then the train. He found a seat and then shut his eyes, so he wouldn't see Arthur, wouldn't see him walking away or waiting for Merlin to come back. 

Instead, he found himself remembering the numerous times he'd made this exact trip, back and forth from London to Cardiff, when he and Arthur had started dating. The first few times he'd made the trip in a maelstrom of anticipation, feeling like his skin and bones and muscles were all thrumming along with the vibrations of the train, every moment carrying him closer to Arthur. Or the return journey, feeling content and satiated and occasionally sore from the marathon sessions of sex they'd have in a weekend, stretching his muscles just to feel the ache, because that ache kept the other one at bay; the ache of imminent loneliness, of lying down in his small bed and feeling all the empty space beside him. He'd known, really, that it would only be a matter of time before he eventually moved in with Arthur, because all that space between them just seemed harder and harder to navigate. Silly, because it really was only a few hours on the train. And yet it was as though there was some thread connecting them, spun out of their own sinews, and Merlin could feel every single inch between them. 

He could feel it now, as the train lurched and began to move, that thread stretching between them, becoming as tight as a piano wire, ready to snap. He took a breath, trying to make space in his chest for this pain as it scraped against his ribs and pressed down on his stomach. 

Merlin remembered the morning that he called Arthur that first time--Arthur was still on tour in America, in one of those flyover states with too many vowels. He'd called Arthur on a whim, when he was still in bed, one lazy morning where he hadn't had to get up too early. He'd been completely unprepared for this version of Arthur; he'd gotten so used to Arthur in the heat of an argument, fiercely intellectual and combative and opinionated. Arthur carried on a conversation like it was a fencing match, striking and parrying and, occasionally, flaying his opponents open the moment he saw their weakness. So few people had talked like that to Merlin, not only fearlessly sure of themselves, but also able to genuinely stand their ground and defend themselves fairly. Merlin tended to listen more than he spoke, preferring to work around a conflict rather than confront it directly. Arthur, however, made him want to argue right back. He made Merlin want to be a part of the same battle. 

So he was completely unprepared for how Arthur would sound on that gray morning, quietly confessing his own loneliness. They'd both still been in bed, and Arthur had pointed out later that really, that was their first ever attempt at pillow talk. Merlin had wanted to comfort him; hence the offer of that story, long since memorialized on his blog. It was one of the highest-viewed entries he'd ever written, and though he'd never told who the story had originally been offered to, Merlin knew that it was a common fan theory that it was by the both of them. 

The first thing they'd ever really created together. Well, at least that would stay up on the internet, until it was archived or destroyed or civilization collapsed entirely. 

_Once upon a time, a baker, a soldier, a witch, and a cat were all aboard a boat bound for the horizon._

_Not a boat. Make it a train, instead._

Arthur's voice, rough and drowsy, and he couldn't have known what the sound of it did to Merlin, how it had made his stomach swoop and his cock--already interested because it was the bloody morning, it tended to wake up before the rest of him--harden just a bit, just enough to distract Merlin from the story. The image: Arthur, in bed, soft, pliant, eyes half-closed, no pressed shirt or blazer or pleated pants, stripped down to just himself, asking and inviting and eventually, dropping off to sleep, breathing long and deep into the phone. 

It was a sound Merlin would become intimately familiar with: the pattern of Arthur's breathing, awake or asleep, quietly meditative while he was reading, rough and gasping when they had sex. 

The train was picking up speed. 

_Why was there a wasteland?_

_Because there’s always a wasteland, whether it stretches across a continent or is contained in a man’s heart. Every story needs its pound of flesh._

_Even mine?_

"Christ," Merlin coughed out, voice breaking on a sob. He wiped at his eyes, which were starting to burn. He knew there were other people in the train car, and he hated being the bloke crying on the train car, but he didn't have much choice in the matter. To hell with it, anyway, it's not like he had much dignity worth preserving anyway. 

He pulled out his phone, seeing that he had missed two calls from his mum since he'd emailed her a few hours ago. He dialed her number, and she picked up after the second ring. 

"Oh, Merlin, darling," she said, as if her own heart were breaking.

"Hi, Mum," he said, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.

* * *

Arthur sat at the kitchen table, trying to think. The emptiness of the flat was making it difficult, which was rather curious. Why should the lack of something weigh so heavily on him? But even the act of going from the front door to the kitchen had exhausted him, as if he were moving through something far heavier than air. 

There were things he had to do. He had to pack up the flat, send emails, buy a plane ticket to Vancouver. But all he could do was sit at the table, feeling out this new emptiness that surrounded him, that had swum into his throat and sank into his stomach, weighing him down. 

Because this was the truth: Merlin was gone. And that's what had changed in the flat, what made it so hard to move or think or breathe. 

Arthur picked up his phone and called Morgana. 

"Arthur?" she said. "What is it?" 

"I need a favor," he said. "And I know I've already used up your good will towards me, so feel free to hang up on me now."

Morgana sighed. "What do you need?" 

"I need you to nag me into being a functional person for the next twenty-four hours so I can pack up the flat. The only other person I think I can call is Gwaine, and he'll probably throw me into the Thames when he's found out what I've done." 

"What did you do?" Morgana asked, sounding alarmed. 

Arthur leaned back in chair, scrubbing a hand across his face. "I broke Merlin's heart." 

There was a long moment of silence. Then she asked, "Is he there?" 

"On a train to Cardiff. He's going to stay with his mum for a while." When Morgana didn't respond, he added, "I think I also need you to get me drunk." 

Morgana was silent so long that he wondered if she'd put her phone on mute so she could scream without bursting his eardrum. Then she said, "I'll bring Scotch." 

Thank god for family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD, I'm so sorry this took me so long to update. In my defense, I've had a crazy couple months.


	19. Made To Be Broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world._  
>  -Oscar Wilde

"It all comes down to a matter of timing, doesn't it?" Arthur said. He considered his half-empty glass of Scotch, observing the play of light through the amber liquid. How long had it been since he'd really gotten well and truly pissed? Not since before his father died, at least. He'd missed it. "Merlin came into my life when I was starting to burn out, when I was standing on the precipice of..."

"Liver failure?" Morgana said drily. 

"Hardly," Arthur scoffed. "More like... spinal failure. I'd been writing professionally for what, five years? And right when I thought I should have a handle on myself and my career and all of it, I was--" 

"A hot mess," she supplied. She sat on the chair opposite his in the kitchen. The kitchen seemed safer than the living room, for some reason, less likely to overwhelm him with Merlin's absence. Morgana's face was pinched, and her fingers tapped on her Blackberry--face-up on the table, but dark and inert--like she was desperate to get back to her overcrowded inbox, as long as it took her away from this conversation.

Arthur shrugged his agreement. "For lack of a better term. But all the things that were wrong with me then are still wrong with me now."

"Indeed," she said.

Arthur took a drink, wincing as the whisky burned down his throat. He slumped back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling of the living room as if it were a crystal ball, as if illumination and revelation lay in the plaster. He wanted to see all the mistakes he'd made as clearly as possible, but all that was up there were a few cobwebs and a small water stain in the corner. Not the best scrying material. 

Arthur continued: "He made everything bearable for a few years--more than bearable, god. He made the world new and interesting. And it hadn't been interesting in so long, and really, I think that's what I' was missing. My curiosity. Readers like to be reassured of things that they already know, but writers are meant to finger the edges of the unknown."

"Finger the edges?" Morgana said, arching her eyebrows. Nobody could sneer so delicately as Morgana. 

"Look, I'm out of practice of turning out meaningful phrases, so just bear with me here. And pass the bottle, Christ." 

Morgana slid the bottle of Glenlivet towards him and Arthur refilled his glass. He couldn't remember emptying it in the first place, but he wasn't going to worry about that right now. 

"Thank you," he said "Where was I?" 

"You were fingering the unknown." 

"Ha bloody ha, Morgana." He took a sip of whisky. "Christ, this is fucking fantastic. Remind me why I've been abstaining?" 

"Haven't the foggiest." 

"Me neither. God, I've been such an idiot." He paused then, realizing the enormous truth of those words. He set his drink down on the table and dropped his head into his arms. "Fuck." 

"That was one of the quicker emotional turnarounds I've seen from you." 

"Fuck," he said again. It felt good, and so few things did these days, so he drew the word out, moaning it into the crook of his elbow. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." 

"Indeed," Morgana said again. 

Arthur wanted to punch something. Possibly his sister. Mostly himself. 

After a moment, Morgana spoke, her voice soft and musing. "I think you've been abstaining from drinking because it's been your principle vice for years--or at least your most obvious one. You self-medicate in the proud tradition of all Pendragon men, or at least the ones I've had the displeasure to know. You inherited your drinking habits from Uther, and so you tried to distance yourself from it, and by extension, him, when he keeled over." 

"Not that it bloody matters." 

"Not a whit," Morgana agreed. 

"Merlin said I should find a therapist," Arthur confessed. 

"Wise of him. I agree." 

Arthur snorted. "Because it's done such wonders for _you._ " 

Morgana had been in therapy since childhood, and it seemed more like a morbid hobby for her nowadays, rather than something that actually helped her. It never seemed to make her sane, by any standard. 

When she didn't answer, Arthur lifted his head out of his arms just enough to see her staring at him, with a glare that nearly turned him to stone. 

"Sorry," he said. 

"You should be, you shit. Lorelei's the one who convinced me not to drop you on your fat arse when I cut Uther out of my life."

Arthur picked himself up enough to take another sip of Scotch. "You're saying I owe my entire literary career to some therapist? Bloody hell, the fates are strange."

"God, you're an ass," Morgana snapped.

Arthur shrugged, mostly in agreement. "I suppose I owe her this heartbreak, too. I would never have met Merlin if you hadn't--Wait, where are you going?" 

Morgana had stood up from the table and was cinching her coat around her narrow waist. "Listen, little brother. I brought you booze, I let you pour your idiotic heart out while I sat and nodded and tried to make sympathetic faces--"

"I'd say you failed," Arthur pointed out. Morgana ignored him.

"And I really can't stand another minute in your bloody company, not with you blaming nearly everyone and everything--from my bloody therapist to the great cosmic forces of time--for how awful you feel right now. You feel awful because you've done an awful thing. The end." She turned to go. 

"You think I don't know that?" Arthur said, pushing himself to his feet. "Why do you think I called you?"

"To get you drunk and give you a shoulder to cry on?" 

"Like hell," Arthur scoffed. "You'd probably snap in half if I tried. Or snap me in half." 

Morgana was putting on her shoes, gathering up her things, and Arthur felt a sharp sense of despair, nearly terror, at the thought of being left along in the empty flat. He thought of that one story of Merlin's, the girl and the evil closet, the way the closet grew while the rest of the house shrank around her, ushering her in, and then the clothes hangers reached out and twisted around the girl's wrists, pulling her inside. Merlin had told him that it had grown out of a nightmare he'd had in rehab. To Arthur, it reminded him of the terror that sometimes came suddenly out of loneliness, the distrust in familiar surroundings, the _jamais vu_ : the sense that something that should have been familiar was, in fact, changed or different, made strange. 

The entire flat was like that now, with Merlin gone. And Arthur felt a sort of queer gravity taking hold of him, a dread that he couldn't shake. If he were alone in the flat, Arthur felt sure that he'd die of alcohol poisoning or of his own hand or something entirely sinister and supernatural. It didn't matter that he didn't rationally believe in such things. He was a writer, and a drunk and depressed one, and disbelief was a shaky antidote to an imagination burdened by despair. 

"Merlin told me I had to call you," Arthur burst out. "If I-- If I was having bad thoughts." 

Morgana wound her silk scarf around her throat. "You're a gloomy bastard, Arthur, you're always having bad thoughts." 

"Christ, Morgana are you actually going to make me spell it out?" he said. 

She looked at him then, properly. God only knows what she saw, because she dropped her hands from her neck, and turned to face him. "Spell what out?" 

In the few hours between Merlin's departure and Morgana's arrival, Arthur had repeatedly run his hands over the contours of this new emptiness in his life, testing its sharpness against his skin. It was bad enough now, but alone? He'd let it run him through. He'd bleed out before he realized he'd realized he'd cut himself. 

"I'll be fine tomorrow," he said. "I'll change my tickets and get to Heathrow and convince myself not to walk into the river with a pocketful of stones." 

Morgana set her hands on the chair in front of her, gazing steadily at him. "And tonight?" 

Arhur poured himself another glass of whiskey, and tried to say something. Nothing came. His courage failed him; he couldn't even meet her gaze, never mind put a name to the feeling that was slowly soaking through him. He just clutched his glass tighter, realizing that he was horrendously close to tears. 

There was a creak as Morgana sat down, then a scrape as she pulled the bottle of whiskey towards herself. "So," she said. "Gwen and I have been kicking around names for the new publishing company. I've been leaning towards Changeling Press." 

Arthur swallowed thickly. "And what's Gwen say about that?" 

"That is sounds like we'd be publishing novels with bikini-armored warrior babes on the covers." 

Arthur smiled. "I'm inclined to agree." 

"Well, to hell with you both, it's my money." She poured herself another glass of Scotch and set the bottle back down on the table. "It's good to be in charge." 

She started unbuttoning her coat, and graciously ignored Arthur as he knuckled a few tears out of his eyes.

#

"I don't think it's a good idea," Hunith said. She stood by the front door of the cottage, hands wrapped around Merlin's scarf like she was holding it hostage. 

"Mum, it's this or I stay on the couch all day and contemplate my utter failure of a life." 

"Merlin, love--" 

"I'm going," he said. "It's been too long since I visited his grave, anyway."

Merlin finished lacing up his trainers and stood. He held a hand out for his scarf. His mother wrapped it around his neck instead, pulling him down to lay a kiss on his cheek. 

"You're not a failure," she said. 

"Mum--" 

"Hush. You're not. Take it from the woman who's been abandoned and widowed and was a single mum at your age." 

Merlin looked down at his shoes, feeling displaced guilt, as he always did when she brought up her relationship with his father. Hunith spotted it and tugged on Merlin's scarf until he met her eyes again. 

"Listen to me," she said. "It's never over when you think it is. Even when you wish it were. When you hit a brick wall, the only thing to do is pick yourself up and set off in a different direction." She tossed the scarf over his shoulder. "Besides, you've been in worse spots than this, love." 

"That's not much of a comfort," he said, grinning lopsidedly. 

"Who needs comfort when you've got perspective?" She patted his cheek and went off to fetch her car keys, and they drove to the cemetery in silence, listening to outdated pop songs on the radio. 

Merlin didn't know anyone who actually talked aloud to gravestones. It was a bit mental, wasn't it? People on telly did it all the time, but Merlin had always believed that was rubbish, lazy storytelling, an excuse for a character to exposit a plot point or some insight to his character. 

It had been a couple years, maybe more, since he'd been to Will's grave, and it took him a few minutes to find it again, amidst all the rows. It always surprised him, how small the headstone was. Will had been such a large, overwhelming personality. His presence had dominated Merlin's childhood, and his death had shattered his teenage self. To have all that distilled into a piece of granite that was no higher than Merlin's knee, never failed to strike him. But they'd all been poor back then, and this was as much as Will's parents had been able to afford. 

_Will Argall_  
Beloved Son  
1986-2003 

Eleven years since they'd put Will in the ground. In another two years, Merlin would have lived half his life without him. 

"Alright, tosser?" Merlin muttered self-consciously. He felt like an idiot. The graveyard was mostly silent: distant traffic, birdsong, the drone of a lawnmower. He sat down next to Will's grave, hoping the ground would be dry. 

It was difficult to imagine Will as anything but a spotty teenager, one that looked mostly like run-of-the-mill chav but hung out with the artsy kids, had a love affair with acid, and carried a journal full of poetry that was only about 70% shit. He had been the one to encourage Merlin to really get into writing. Merlin had wanted to go into film, to make horror movies. 

"Nah, fuck that," Will had said. "All Hollywood is full of wankers jerking each other off. 'Sides, movies are limited by what they can show, yeah? You write a book, you're only limited by what you can make people believe." 

He'd spoken with all the conviction a stoned sixteen year-old could muster, which was more than enough to convince Merlin to start writing stories instead of half-assed scripts. Will was the only person who ever had--or would, hopefully--read those early stories. 

Merlin shut his eyes, and imagined what he would say to Will, if he could. He imagined them in the tiny patch of ash trees and hazel shrubs that they unironically had called "the wood;" they were sitting on the old stumps where they'd played as kids, and had smoked endless joints as teens. It had been bulldozed back in 2006, when the real estate boom had stuck its dirty fingers into all of Cardiff's little corners.

_Your mum's right,_ Will would say, since he'd agreed with Hunith on anything and everything. _There's nothing to do but pick yourself up and move the fuck on._

_Can't I even have a day to be a mopey bastard?_ Merlin responded. 

_Bollocks, take as many days as you need._ Will, in his imagination, was wearing the same gray-green hoodie that he'd eventually died in, over a ratty pair of baggy jeans. He was rolling a cigarette, bare thumbs poking through the holes in his sleeves. _Even though Arthur's a fucking wanker, and you don't need him for shit._

_He's not though,_ Merlin replied, and he hated himself for it a bit, that he still felt the need to defend him. 

_He's a daft cunt if he's swanned off to bloody Canada without you,_ Will insisted, lighting the cigarette.

Merlin couldn't help smiling just a little, as he imagined Will letting loose a barrage of insults in Arthur's general direction. He'd often imagined what Will would have thought of Arthur; Merlin suspected that the two of them would have suffered each others' company in mutual, seething annoyance. 

_But I love him,_ Merlin thought.

_Love bleeds us dry and leaves us in the rain, don't it?_ Will said. He had transformed a bit, in Merlin's imagination, into who he might have been if he'd lived; a little bit older, a little wearier and worldlier. Some of his rougher edges were sanded down, and some of them were honed. Merlin imagined hollows around his cheekbones, bags under his eyes, a few more scars around his knuckles. The ratted hoodie was replaced with a sweater and jacket that were just as worn. Most of the people Merlin had grown up with had hard childhoods, and harder adult lives. Merlin had gotten lucky, gotten out.

Will took a last drag of his cigarette and then ground it into the stump. _Love's everything until it leaves you._

_So is it better to be alone?_ Merlin asked. 

_You got all eternity to be alone, boyo,_ said Will. _No need to hurry, take it from me._

Merlin snickered. "Miss you, Will," he admitted, aloud into the quiet of the graveyard. 

He thought of Will as a boy, Will as a teenager, Will as a corpse that lay stiff and heavy in its coffin. Merlin had been one of the pallbearers at his funeral, carrying Will's coffin out of the church and into the hearse. He remembered its terrible weight when he'd picked it up, the inescapable fact of what it contained. 

And then there was the Will of his imagination, the Will that would never exist, the one that had grown up and graduated and gotten into uni and dropped out of uni and had his heart broken and read his poetry aloud at open mics and had fucked up once or twice but never so bad as the night he died, the night he'd drunk most of a bottle of gin and had two hits of molly before crashing his car into a pylon. 

Merlin shut his eyes, and imagined Will standing up from the stump where he'd sat. Will brushed off his pants, quirked his mouth at Merlin, and walked away without a backwards glance. 

Merlin came back to himself, to the graveyard, to the damp that had soaked through the knees of his trousers, the distant noise of traffic. He thought to himself that the problem with talking to ghosts was that they talked in circles, giving you no answers at all. And of course, when the conversation was over, they went back to being dead. 

Merlin stood, using Will's gravestone to lever himself up, and tried to shake some of the stiffness out of his legs before he walked back to his mum's car. 

"Nice visit?" she asked when he sat back down. Merlin reclined the passenger seat of the car. 

"Oh, sure," he said. "It was great. We got caught up, drank a couple beers down at the pub, played some footie."

His mum side-eyed him. "Merlin," she said. 

"What do you want me to say?" he asked. "Will's been in the ground for years, and I still bloody miss him. I imagined him calling Arthur every foul name I could think of, but it's not the same."

"I miss him too. And I'm sure he'd have some truly choice words for Arthur." 

"For me too, for letting myself--" 

"You didn't _let yourself_ anything," Hunith said sharply. "What's happened isn't because of anything you said or did, Merlin. So no more talk of, of this being your fault, or that you're a failure. You loved Arthur as best as you could, and that's the best anyone can do. Love isn't always rational, and neither is grief." 

Merlin looked down at his sneakers, muddy from walking between the rows of gravestones. His mum was right, but-- "Heartbreak's not much for rationality either."

His mum ran his hand through his hair. "No, it's not. I'll remind you, though." 

Merlin smiled weakly. "Good. Can we go home?" 

"Like hell," Hunith said. "We're getting ice cream."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm an awful person and actually let half a year lapse between updates. In my defense, the last six months included:
> 
> -a six week writing workshop  
> -losing one of my jobs and (unsuccessfully so far) trying to find another  
> -attempting to organize the workforce at the job I still do have  
> -many, many days where I've wanted to tear my hair out and/or lie face-down on the floor and say _fuck it all_
> 
> And if you all hadn't continued leaving me beautiful comments on this and my other fics, I can't say that I would have made myself to come back to this story. If you ever doubt that fic-writers read or care about your comments: we do. Sincerely, knowing that people care about this story made me want to keep writing it. Thank you all for that; it's kept me going, not just with working away on this but with, you know, getting out of bed in the morning and facing the day.


	20. All My Little Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Not for all the tea in China  
> Not if I could sing like a bird  
> Not for all North Carolina  
> Not for all my little words  
> Not if I could write for you  
> The sweetest song you ever heard  
> It doesn't matter what I'll do  
> Not for all my little words"
> 
> -The Magnetic Fields

_Dear Merlin,_ Arthur thought. _I'm packing up the house and I--_

And that's where the thought ended. And he...what? What would he, in a perfect world where none of this awfulness had ever happened, say to Merlin? He'd said all he could to Merlin, for better or worse. All the words he'd had, he'd spent on their last few days together.

But he couldn't stop narrating the flow of his day to Merlin, or to the absence of him. It was a ghost with weight, following him from one room to the other, waiting for something. But the thought dangled, without conclusion or even any real meaning. 

_I am packing up the house and I--_

_I am forcing myself to eat a slice of toast and swallow some panadol for this nagging headache and I--_

_I'm calling Leon and I--_

"Arthur, mate! How the bloody hell are you?" Leon's voice was cheerful, which seemed strange. Is this what happened when you went away from people? They started being friendly at you, like a stranger? 

"I'm... shitty, actually. About two stops from absolutely fucking awful," Arthur said, turning away from the metaphorical ghost and the answer it was waiting for. "And yourself?"

There was some noise on Leon's end. A footie game, perhaps? "Um. I'm--I'm sorry to hear that," Leon said, and his voice had lost all of its good cheer. 

"Fuck, sorry," Arthur said. "But it's been--I mean--"

"Listen, Arthur, you don't have to explain to me. Honestly, I'm happy to hear you're not dead or anything. We've all been worried about you." That sounded a bit more like the Leon he knew. The worrier, the caretaker, the one reliable bloke out of all Arthur and his asshole friends. 

"Sorry," Arthur said again. He was vividly remembering all the reasons he'd not been talking to any of his friends, mostly that they didn't deserve to have his bullshit depression and grief sprayed all over them. 

"Christ, quit apologizing, okay? I'm glad we don't have to stage an intervention or anything. Gwaine was all--well, you know how he gets. Fookin' ijit, most of the time." 

_Merlin, I've barely avoided being the subject of an intervention from my too-invested-in-my-life-friends and I--_

Arthur cleared his throat. "Well, he's a fucking ijit that got me a job as a producer on Boy Outside. I'm flying to Vancouver day after tomorrow." 

"Aw, that's grand." Leon sounded genuinely happy for him. "I know he's thrilled about the project, he's been talking it up endlessly. He was waiting for you to get off your ass and give him an answer." 

"Yeah, I emailed him back a couple days ago." 

"That's fantastic, mate. Though I didn't know I warranted a phone call. Figured I'd hear about it when it was made public." 

God, Arthur hadn't even thought about that. He shuddered to think of what all his bloody Twitter followers would say. Luckily, few of them expected him to ever answer. Just the nutters, and that was just business as usual. And being an author had the upside of having almost no mainstream media interested in your life, ever, unless something entertainingly idiotic like Dickensgate had happened. 

_Merlin, I remembered how almost all the fame I have is due to you, and I--_

"Yeah, I haven't made a statement yet," Arthur said, sitting down on the settee, hoping it would calm the storm of emotions that had erupted in his chest. "Morgana will probably cook something up, but she's been busy with this whole other thing." 

"You mean her and Gwen's new press? Gwennie told me all about it. It'll be amazing, I think, the two of them." 

Arthur felt curiously nonplussed that Leon knew about the horribly-named Changeling Press, though it was ridiculous. As Morgana had caustically reminded him several times, life had gone on while he'd hidden himself away in the flat. His friends' lives had gone on. 

"Yeah," Arthur said. "They'll do just fine." 

There was one of those silences; both of them trying to think of something else to say, if there was anything else to say. Did it really take so little time for two people to forget how to interact? 

"Right, well," said Arthur. "I was wondering. While I'm gone, could you just look in on the house every so often? Water the plants and pick up the post and all?" 

"Of course," Leon said. "Is Merlin leaving at the same time you are?" 

Arthur felt a wave of relief, that he might be able to get away from explaining the whole truth without lying or glaring omissions. "He's already left, actually." 

The words came out of his mouth so smooth, they didn't even sting. He'd probably choke on them later, though. 

"All right, then," Leon said. "Will any of your plants shrivel up if I'm not there before Tuesday?" 

Arthur looked around. "Don't think so. And if they do, well. It's fine. I've dealt with worse." 

Leon snorted. "That's bloody morbid, Arthur." 

"It's the truth, though. Dead plant isn't much compared to a dead parent, right?" 

Leon full-out laughed at that, which startled Arthur. He couldn't remember the last time he'd made someone laugh. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed, for that matter. It felt foreign to him, a familiar word in a language he'd forgotten how to speak. 

"So you'll do it?" said Arthur. "Morgana has a spare set of keys, you can pick them up from her." 

"Of course. I'll text her or something. And let me know how filming goes, yeah? Don't be such a stranger." 

"Right," Arthur said. He felt like he should add something else, so he added, "I've got to pack. Good chatting with you, though." 

"You too, mate. Safe travels." 

"Thanks." Arthur hung up, feeling relieved. 

_Dear Merlin, I might be relearning how to interact with people and I--_

_I--_

He sighed and went back to packing.

* * *

> _DEATH AND THE CHILD_
> 
> _"M'not a child," the boy said._
> 
> _"A very young adult, then," Death said agreeably. The boy glared at him, suspecting some trick. But there was none: Death can be sneaky, or sudden, or terrible, or stealthy; Death is never a trick, though. It's always the plainest of truths._
> 
> _"I don't wanna go," the boy said._
> 
> _"I'm sorry," Death said, and he was, a little. Things are as they ever were, and boys die all the time. That never made it less of a sorrow._
> 
> _"I just bet you are," said the boy. He was surly and petulant, but that didn't lessen Death's sympathy. He knew better than to tug on the boy's sleeve or throw him over his shoulder and carry him off. Death could wait for someone to come around to the idea that they were dead. It was tiresome, but, he thought in the privacy of his own thoughts, his was a rather tiresome job._
> 
> _The boy kicked his feet. "I was just getting to the good stuff, wasn't I? Like, in a couple years, I wouldn't be such a spotty dweeb anymore, it was gonna get better."_
> 
> _"There's no guarantee," said Death._
> 
> _The boy squared his shoulders. "Right, but like. Puberty is the fucking low point."_
> 
> _"It's one of them. It's definitely not the only one."_
> 
> _"Fuckin' hell. It's not like it could get much worse though, yeah?"_
> 
> _"It can get much worse," said Death._
> 
> _The boy looked at Death. "Guess you'd know."_
> 
> _It wasn't such a bad place to die, thought Death, though he didn't say so aloud. It was a quiet street near a highway, with some rather pretty rolling hills off in the distance. Not the most breath-taking vista Death had ever seen, but it had its charms. And there were much worse places to die._
> 
> _"What's the worst thing you've ever seen?" the boy asked._
> 
> _"The worst?" Death asked._
> 
> _"Yeah, like, the worst death. I mean, you've seen them all, right? And there must be one that, no matter how bad some poor bloke got it in the end, you could tell him at least this isn't as bad as so-and-so's or whatever."_
> 
> _Had anybody ever asked him this before? He couldn't recall, not in his long, long existence._
> 
> _Death asked the boy, "But why would you want to know?"_
> 
> _"It might make me feel better, like."_
> 
> _"Nothing's going to make you feel better," Death said gently. "You're dead."_
> 
> _"Well, don't go rubbing it in." The boy said, cross._

* * *

"I'm not sure how I feel about it," Freya said. She handed the tablet back to Merlin, who tucked it back into his knapsack. 

"I didn't ask how you felt about it," said Merlin. "I asked how Death should answer." 

Freya looked down at the hill they'd just climbed, the valley spread out below them, which was dotted here and there with rays of sunlight. Climbing hills or going on hikes seemed to be Freya's answer to all of life's problems. Broken heart? Go on a hike. Craving a fix? Go on a hike. Grieving? Go on a hike. Detoxing? Well, go on an easy hike, with lots of breaks for water and rest. 

"I heard you," Freya answered. "But I can't answer that until you tell me something first." 

"And what's that?" Merlin asked. 

"Why you're trying to sort through a friend's death more than a decade after it happened." 

Merlin dug the toe of his trainer into the dirt. He loved Freya, he did; nobody could ask for a better sponsor. Their relationship was based on her calling him out on his shit which, god knew, he surely needed. 

"I went to visit his grave the other day," Merlin said. "I've been thinking about him." 

"Fair enough," she said. "But when you emailed me, telling me that you'd been tempted to use again--"

Merlin groaned and leaned forward, putting his face into his hands. He shouldn't have sent that email. He'd been tipsy off his mum's sherry and lonely and horny and angry and-- and he'd been in his old bedroom, which still reeked of the desperation and despair of his teenage years. Addiction was such a stupid thing, that you could be clean for near a decade, and under the right circumstances, those years could shrink and shrivel away to nothing at all. The way he'd felt that night, it may as well have been the night after his first NA meeting. 

"Oh, hush," said Freya. "None of the things you wrote about included Will. You told me about Arthur and his father and your father and everything else. Will didn't merit a mention, then." 

"I've already written about all that. Uther and bloody Arthur and all of it." 

"So you had to find something else to feel sad about?" Coming from Freya, it wasn't a glib question, but an honest one. And it made Merlin think. 

"I guess so," he said. He leaned on her, just a bit, resting his shoulder against hers. "It's a familiar pain, at least." 

"Grief you already beat," Freya agreed. She took his weight amicably, a warm, strong wall to lean against. 

"I wouldn't say I beat it," Merlin said, thinking of Will's grave, of the fresh memories visiting it had dug up. "It's just... an old friend, at this point." 

"Writing about his death is comfortable." She gestured down at the valley. "A place you're already at home in. Unlike all this newer scary trauma." 

"You think I'm not facing my grief, or whatever?" 

"I think you moved back in to your mum's house because your life imploded," Freya said. Blunt as ever. "And that's okay right now. But..." 

"It's a rut." 

"You'll be digging your own grave if you hang out in this boneyard long enough. That's just the way it is." She pulled a bottle of water out of her knapsack and took a long drink of it, then offered it to Merlin. "You're retracing your steps, and that's a dangerous thing for addicts to do." 

Merlin took the water and drank. "You think so?" 

Freya shook her head. "I know. It's happened to me too." 

"It's never happened to me before." 

Freya touched his cheek. "It's because you've been lucky. You've only ever had your life smashed to bits the once."

Merlin thought about his history with Freya; they'd been in each others' orbits long before either of them had gotten sober, back when they'd both been a couple of scummy teenagers from the far suburbs, getting wasted at various parties in abandoned buildings and empty houses. Whispered rumors followed her, typical shitty teenage lies that she'd slept her way through most of Cardiff and would do anything for you if you shared your good drugs. When they'd met again at NA, she'd been wearing a t-shirt that left all the scars on her forearms visible. She wasn't flaunting them, but, as she'd told him later, she wasn't going to bloody well hide them either. 

"Once should have been enough," Merlin said. 

"It really should have." She stood up. "Ready to move on?" 

Merlin squinted at her. "Did you actually just say that?" 

Freya burst out laughing, loud enough that it echoed down the hills.

* * *

_Dear Merlin, I'm taking a cab to the airport, and he's driving like a typical cabbie, which is to say, defying death at every stoplight and corner. I've got enough clothes for a few weeks, and not nearly enough for the months I'll be gone, but I couldn't be arsed. I feel like--_

_Dear Merlin, I'm halfway to Heathrow. It's gloomy and gray, but with that clarity in the air that happens in spring, that I used to love so much. I remember the day I came back to London after the tour, when you met me at Paddington, and the weather was just like this and I--_

_Dear Merlin, I'm picking up my boarding pass and loading my luggage onto the carousel so it can meet me in Vancouver. Will I--_

_Will you--_

"Have a pleasant flight," the ticketing agent assured him. She smiled politely at him, like she didn't know she was talking to someone who'd been on a knife's edge for the last few months. And why should she know? 

"Thank you," Arthur said. He picked up his boarding pass and went to stand in line for security. 

_Dear Merlin, I'm here at Heathrow, I'm leaving, and I don't even know why anymore. There's a ghost--maybe of you, maybe of Uther, and maybe of me--traveling with me. I suppose anything is better than traveling alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to stop apologizing for the long waits in between chapters. But a quick update, since so many of you have left lovely, supportive comments or messages: 
> 
> I am still writing this story. (I'm also working on a lot of other writing projects as well, mostly non-fanfic stuff.)  
> My coworkers and I successfully unionized our workplace. HOT DIGGITY DAMN.  
> I am...I think "depressed but okay" is a good way of putting it? Or maybe "depressed but taking steps to mitigate it" would be more accurate. 
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day, lovely people. Thank you all for waiting, for being patient and understanding and enthusiastic. <3


	21. The Reader

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From one of Merlin's private journals, circa 2006

_[From one of Merlin's private journals, circa 2005.]_

I told Freya that I hadn't written since the overdose and she told me that was stupid. I told her everything was stupid, and she told me to write that if I needed to. I could write it a hundred times, like our teachers used to do in school when they caught us passing notes or whatnot. Maybe if I did that, eventually I'd start writing something else. 

This is stupid. Everything is stupid. This is stupid. Everything is stupid. Everything is stupid. Everything is stupid and a waste of time and dumb and I fucking hate everything, starting with me and ending with the rest of the universe. 

I've been told that I need to believe in a higher power to go into NA, but I don't. I can't. That's not who I am. And she said, what if your higher power is, like, an author. I still thought that was stupid, because God doesn't exist, no matter what you want to call him. But maybe--maybe I can believe in a reader. Not a writer, but someone following along with the whole story. Noting each fallen sparrow and all that rubbish. Because, like--readers don't care as much, do they? Well, I guess they do, but they don't judge. They know that the characters aren't always in control, that there are bigger things around them. Readers love characters despite their flaws, right? Or because of them. As long as the writer is doing a good job. 

So there's no god, no author, but maybe I can believe in a reader. Some twat reading under the covers hoping I'll straighten out my bloody life, because that would make for a better story than:

"Everything was stupid, including Merlin, and so he died." 

Because that's a crap ending, it is. I can say that much with certainty. Someone, somewhere, is going to be reading along, reading all my mistakes and fuckups, reading about the overdose and making Mum cry all those times, reading about Will, reading about how I'm a fag but still too cowardly to out myself to more than a couple people--they'll be reading it and thinking, "Yes, but he's got to pull it together in the end. Otherwise, it'll be a shit story." 

All right, Higher Reader. My name is Merlin, I've just turned twenty, and I'm an addict. And if I have anything to bloody say about it, this won't be some shit-sad postmodern literary novel with a stupidly tragic ending. I'd like this to be a heroic story with dragons and monsters and adventures and whatnot, but I'll settle for at least not being a pathetic cautionary tale.


End file.
